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Thought this would be of interest to everyone. Just Click Here to read about Generational Selling understand your customers - The Age Factor.
Last week I wrote a blog about Short Sales Are Driving Me Crazy and received several helpful comments and shared stories about their short sale experiences. One of the comments I received was from a company that wrote about their services as a facilitator who will handle the entire transaction. Sounded good and worth the expense, if they would handle the transaction and get the property to close. So I mentioned it at one of my office meetings, thinking it sounded like a good idea for the company. After my meeting I was approached by one of the Realtors in my office who shared their experience in hiring a facilitator and how they were paying approximately $600.00 a month for their services. After hearing their story about the expense and the endless paper work they still needed to do plus additional paper work for the short sale company they hired, a good idea initially seems to be expensive without alleviating the work involved in the short sale process. Also 1 year later and the property still didn't close. My question is does anyone know of a company who provides this service and really does what they promise all the paper work and handles the entire transaction. Also like a realtor, if we can't get the property to close we don't get paid so why should they.
SOUTH BEACH
263 Lamport Blvd >C/S Reid Ave
Sunday 9/14/08, 12:00-3:00
Gorgeous 3 bedroom cape, finished basement, many upgrades, close to VZ Bridge.
Call 718-966-4000
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Once a year our company gets together to raise money for the American Cancer Society. The event is called Relay For life. We have spent months making gift baskets for our raffle and have over 75 beautiful baskets. Some of the baskets we will be raffling off are an ipod, tickets to Regis and Kelly, a wedding basket, DVD player, lottery tree with over $100 in scratch off tickets. These are only a few of the many baskets we will be raffling off. The owner is making his famous sausage and peppers and eggplant parm. The owner of Massage Envy will be giving massages and donating all the money. Everyone in the company is working really hard to make this the most successful fund raiser ever. This is such a great way for everyone to work together for one goal. Especially in todays real estate market where business is so difficult, it gives you such a good feeling to see everyone working together towards one goal. I have worked for this company for over 27 years, I don't think I could have chosen a better company to work for. If your from Staten Island or the surrounding area, don't miss this event on Friday June 13th at Wagner College.
I am the Branch Manager of Appleseed Realty GMAC Real Estate, located in Staten Island, N.Y. 10312. 718-966-4000. I have been in the Real Estate industry for over 25 years with Appleseed Realty GMAC.
Welcome to Appleseed Realty GMAC Real Estate. Let me introduce some of the programs my company has to offer our customers and Realtors .
Value-Added Customer Programs: Through GMAC Real Estate’s expansive and still-growing roster of HomeRewardsSM partnerships with home-related service companies that offer our clients special offers and discounts, I can further demonstrate the value we offer our customers – and in the process, help relieve the stress that so many customers experience before, during and after a sale.
The Premier Service Guarantee: A certificate which I will sign and give to my customers to explain our pledge of service and describes my role as your Trusted Advisor, Skilled Negotiator, and Expert FacilitatorSM. With this document I will explain what we do, the value we create from our service, and clearly put the customers needs first!
Customer Satisfaction Survey: Through the Premier Service program, every GMAC Real Estate customer is asked to complete a survey evaluating the service they received. The simple act of asking them to do so sends an unmistakable message--that their opinion is important and their input is valued. In addition, the surveys allow you and GMAC Real Estate to document a track record of superior service that no other company can match.
Elegant Homes® is the most powerful luxury marketing program in the industry today!
As a leader in luxury real estate, we continually monitor consumer trends and behavior. We have found that Internet-empowered consumers represent the most profound shift in the history of advertising affecting almost every industry, including residential real estate. Today, 80% of all home buyers, including luxury home buyers, use the Internet to search for a home. Our Elegant Homes program is designed to target luxury home buyers in the medium they use most to search for homes-the Internet!
A GMAC Home Protection Plan makes your home more appealing, and protects you before, during and after the sale.
■ Homes with a warranty sell up to 50% faster than unwarranted homes.
■ Warranted homes are perceived as a safer investment and on average offer a selling price of up to 3% more.
■ With home warranty protection, the chance for conflict over a malfunctioning system or appliance is minimized.
■ A warranty can help avoid conflicts over a malfunctioning item that could affect or delay your sale.
■ Home warranties limit the possibility that you’ll be asked to reimburse the buyer for a breakdown of a covered component after closing.
Virtual Tours: At Appleseed Realty GMAC we take a Virtual Tour which is in High Definition with music for all our homeowners, this is also free to all our agents.
Our goal is to take the stress out of home financing and make the experience as pleasurable as possible. Making your dream come true does not have to be a nightmare and Mortgage Links can help.
Priority Financing for Appleseed GMAC Customers
See our Appleseed Realty GMAC Sign in front of your home with our
Priority Financing rider
Licensed mortgage banker with the New York and New Jersey Banking Department qone day turn around time on commitments "Don't waste time with unqualified buyers" qPriority Financing ensures the lowest possible rate for your buyerSpecial discounts on closing costs for Appleseed Realty GMAC
GMAC Real Esate is transforming the real estate industry with a business model that is based on what the consumer wants - more value, more control and ha higher level of service from a real estate professional they can trust to be on their side every step of the way. Our model begins with Premier Service
I believe that the Internet is the furture. I would like to make this my area of expertise, even though I am not an expert. I would like to share some helpful information to all agents and to inform the buyers and sellers what we do to give their home full exposure.
Good Web Design:
Too often, Real Estate companies and their Web Designers work too hard to make their site “different” by taking approaches which are ego-driven, or artistically driven, rather than user driven. The end result is a web site that frustrates its users, and underperforms.
To avoid this, you need to take a very cold, hard look at your site from an “outsider” perspective, and if possible, get other people to review your site and provide honest feedback. To be “different”, you should have a better experience for site visitors, with a wealth of content, tools and listings, not an odd font, strange color scheme, or unexpected menu locations.
To evaluate the effectiveness of your site’s design, please review our Web Design Checklist
Elements of Good Web Design
Make Important Things Prominent – Use Clear Visual Hierarchies
This simply means that if something is important to the user, it should ideally be:
Placed near the top of the page – People in all cultures read pages top to bottom
Placed on the left side of the page – In North America, people read from left to right
Be larger than other page elements – “Bigger” automatically means “important” to users
Have more visual emphasis than other page elements – paragraph headers, bolds, italics
A good example of this in action is on the gmacrealestate.com site. The link for “BUY A HOME” is on the top and the left. It is clearly one of the most important pages on the site. As you go from Left to right, the menu items are:
BUY A HOME
SELL YOUR HOME
FIND AN OFFICE / AGENT
LEARN ABOUT REAL ESTATE
CAREERS IN REAL ESTATE
ABOUT US
“About Us” is on the right side of the page – one of the last things that a user will notice, if they ever notice it at all.
On the bottom of the same page, and every page are other links, such as
Terms of Use
Privacy
Technical Considerations
Agent Intranet
These links are of much less importance to home buyers and sellers, and are thus at the bottom of the page, are not in ALL CAPS, and are in a much smaller font.
This makes sense – and most sites follow these rules to a degree, but it is surprising how many sites give relatively unimportant features the top spot on their menu, while burying “Home Search” or “Find an Agent” in the middle. Other sites sometimes don’t include these all important pages on their menus at all.
function showpop() { alert(" When you clicked on the underlined and differently colored clickability link, you naturally expected a reaction. So will users of your site.") }
Make it Obvious What’s Clickable and Usable
On the internet, the underlined word has a special significance that it doesn’t possess offline. Online, underlining is an indicator of clickability. This came about in the early days of the internet, and it has not changed.
Therefore, rather than try to fight this and decide that to be different “on my site, clickable links are going to be bold”, please follow the convention of underlining. The more you diverge from standard web design, the harder your site will be to use, and less satisfying for the user.
If you have “buttons” that can be clicked, or fields to be filled in, it’s a good idea to use a minor amount of shading to give the illusion of depth onscreen. Remember, people have visual expectations, and buttons that seem to “stick up”, and fields that can be “filled in” encourage user interaction.
Be Consistent
This means that you should be consistent in your page layouts. Users dislike having to change the way they use a site after they’ve left the main page.
If your menu is on the top of the page, it should stay on the top on all pages of your site. If the center of the page contains content, it should always contain content. If your links are blue and underlined on one page, they can’t be red and bold on another, and so on.
Again, this makes perfect sense, but it is surprising how often you find sites that don’t have a consistent feel. That lack of consistency creates an impression in the mind of the site visitor as to the nature of the company owning the site.
One area where you need to make decisions about consistency is in the integration of MLS feeds into your site. If you use the local MLS site for listings, rather than populating the listings within your own site’s format, you should try to subtly integrate the look and feel of your own site with that of the MLS site as much as possible. If the MLS site is terribly designed, then you may have no choice but to have some “disruption” between your site and the listings.
Optimize for Screen Size
Screen resolution has changed dramatically in the last several years, enabling larger and “roomier” websites. Standard Web screen sizes are now 1024x768 pixels wide – almost twice the standard size in 2000. When you design your site, you should optimize layout for this size, while being aware that at least 10% of users still use smaller screen sizes.
For those users you should work with your designer to design a “liquid layout”, which automatically adjust its presentation to the users screen size, or do as some companies have done and devote the “right rail” to supplementary information that large screen users can see, but small screen users can do without.
Be Aware of the Fold
The bottom of the screen is often the beginning of “no man’s land” on the internet. Research shows that most users will not scroll down to view Search Results, and visitors to other web sites follow similar patterns, with dramatically fewer clicks and views of elements that appear “below the fold” on any page.
For this reason, you should be certain to ensure your entire navigation menu is visible above the fold, and keep key content and lead capture mechanisms where a user can see them without scrolling.
One pages with a great deal of content, it is expected that the user will scroll down to view listings, articles and other information, but some designers tend to break long sections of content into shorter pages, with the user clicking “next” at the bottom of the page, rather than forcing the user to scroll.
I hope this was helpful and If anyone has some information to share regarding web design or optimization please e-mail me at kwynn@appleseedhomes.com
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