Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing}

We spend a lot of time here on Active Rain, and in social media seminars, talking about how to use Facebook as professionals to be found by new clients. This week, the shoe was on the other foot for me!

On Monday I hired a Realtor to sell one of my investment properties in Waukee, IA. My husbandand I reached out to this particular Realtor (I can't remember if it was thru voice mail or email), and the first time I spoke to him, he said "yeah, I saw on Facebook it looks like your husband and I have a mutual friend and what do you do at Zillow".

Here is what the Realtor knew about me before even placing the first call:

• I am an actual person.
• I have a job and knew where I worked.
• I am married and he knows where my husband works.
• We are out of town sellers.
• We are into the Internet and use Facebook a lot, based on our Friend count.
• What I look like, so he can guess my approximate age.
• He knows a little about my interests because you can see which Fan pages I follow.
• He knew who, if any, mutual friends we had. How good of conversation starter is that?

As you can imagine, the first call we had together was no cold call. We were instantly able to have a more personal conversation and he was hired minutes later. I really appreciated the fact that he took a few minutes to do a little research about me before picking up the phone and it made for a much warmer first conversation.

So yes, Facebook is a great prospecting tool and can potentially get your deals. But it is also a great tool to help work with the leads you get through other sources!

(Oh, and I bet you all are wondering where I found him? He was the only Realtor in Waukee, IA to have a completely filled out profile here on Active Rain and Zillow. Did I really have a choice who to use? Haha!)

We all know that real estate is local, and obviously this applies to trends and reports. For the last three years, Zillow has put out a report each quarter where we analyzed all the data on the site (for about 90 million homes) and released a report which covered trends at the national level, then broke them down to the neighborhood level.

Our goal was to always get this information out even faster, as a lot can happen in even a quarter, and today we can now do this on the Zillow Local Pages. The information on these pages will automatically update weekly.

On the homepage, you'll find a Local Info tab:

Once you click on the tab, it will remember where you last looked, or you can do a search in the free form seach box or use the area drop down bar. You can customize your report from the national level, down to the neighborhood level.

Once in your desired area, you can find a wealth of information. There are housing trend reports and information such as local demographic and about area schools. There are also ways for you to interact with the page and position yourself as a local expert.

Reports examples:

Click on "Home Values" in the left hand column or "See more Chicago home values" to get deeper, more customized information about housing trends:

Back to the Local Tab, there are ways to position yourself as a local expert on this page, for free.

We pull in the top local experts for the area. Here is a video on how to become a Local Expert, it has a lot to do with participation on the site.

If you are a shutterbug, you can upload photos of the area and locally tag them to appear on the page. Under the photo, your name, photo and a link to your Zillow profile will appear. Uploading will also help you earn points towards becoming a Local Expert.

We pull in current, local questions and answers from Zillow Advice. Don't know about Zillow Advice? Check out this video which explains how to get involved. Participating can get you on this page and help towards becoming a Local Expert or Zillow All Star, both of which help you appear higher in the Directory. Oh, and did I mention it may actually help you get business!

Have fun playing around with the new local pages. Hopefully you'll find it to be a good resource of information, and be able to use the pages to attract new business.

I just returned the NAR Midyear meeting, and once again the most popular subject I got asked about was the Zestimate.  Where does the data come from and how accurate are they are the most common questions. 

We at Zillow are working on creating a library of training videos, and I am please to now give you a training video on the Zestimate to help answer these questions.  Actually, we created two videos on the subject. 

This first video is geared toward Real Estate professional, and how the Zestimate works along side of your listing information. 

The second video is geared more toward the home owner, buyer or seller.  If you are working with a client that is using the Zestimate as an appraisal (verses just a starting point or an estimation), this could be a good video to pass along to them. 

Both of these videos are available on You Tube

Also, please make sure to check out these other videos on various Zillow topics.

Easiest way to instantly increase the value of home? Apparently, all you need to do is have an A List celeb move in!

Now I know that Brad Pitt has his hands full with SIX kids, so he probably doesn't have a lot of time on his hands to watch TV or read the news. So I guess it IS possible that he totally missed what has been going on with CA housing prices in the last couple of years.

Actually, Zillow's real estate market reports show that Malibu, where Pitt lived, is indeed posting increases in home prices. The Zillow Home Index from Q1 2009 over Q4 2008 showed an increase of 9.3% and Q1 2009 over Q1 2008 increased 3.4%.

What does this mean for Pitt's home? He bought the home in 2005 for 8 million. He just put it on the market for 18 million!!! 10 million appreciation?? I guess it is good to be an entertainment king.

The City of Chicago is getting in on the text messaging and alerts phenom.

Visit the Notify Chicago website, and you can sign up to receive texts, emails, or recorded messages in the event of a emergency for your specific neighborhood from the city.

Alerts you can sign up for are: emergency incidents, extreme weather, major planned event, public health notifications and transportation/traffic emergencies.

Just one of the many free services our 10.25% sales tax rate covers! Sign up today and get your money's worth. :)