Aggieland, TX

Closing gifts can be dodgy things.

Do you want to be the agent that gives your client a keychain while the other agent gives their client a bottle of champagne with personalized label and a set of wine glasses too? I don't think so.

How about a door knocker or a gift card for the local spa?

Then there are the BBQ tools or the monogrammed cheese board. There's the dinner for two gift cards or the basket of toiletries or fruit. What about the old standard, the house plant?

So my question to you is do you give your clients a closing gift and if so what? Is it something that can be bought at the local store, something personalized or a fistfull of gift cards? Do you give them something with your contact info on it or is it something that you think they will need and remember you for?

I wonder which one of you has the most original, the wackiest or the most effective gift of all.

It would be interesting to know so tell all..............

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

                                       

For many Americans, Ireland holds a special place in their hearts. Most have never been there but claim ancestry and a love for all things Irish. For the fortunate that have been able to walk on the Emerald Isle they leave with a vow to return and take with them many great stories of the Irish scenery, pubs and hospitality.

 

And then there's the very fortunate few that have been able to buy a piece of the island for themselves. Whether it's a sprawling county estate in the most southern tip of Ireland, a thatched roof cottage on the west coast or an apartment in Dublin's fair city, Irish Americans were buying a piece of Ireland at a time with property values turned ordinary Irish citizens into millionaires overnight. When small run down farm houses were being bought up for more money than the average Irish farmer could make in a lifetime and it wasn't just the Americans buying into the Irish charm it was Germans, French and the Swiss too.

 

However these are the few that may not be so fortunate after all. Recent developments in the Irish property market may have these Irish Americans cringing at their miscalculation as news of Liam Carroll, the largest Irish developer whose companies are reputed to have built more apartments and office buildings in Ireland than any other company may be on the brink of flooding the Irish market with cheap apartments and unfinished office buildings.

 

Ireland, whose property market has been severely hit by the real estate crises with the values in some areas dropping by as much as 75%, is bracing itself for further declines in values. Mr. Carroll filed for bankruptcy protection after Dutch owned ACC Bank, applied for The Zoe Group to be placed in receivership. Mr. Carroll is indebted to 7 banks to the tune of €1.3 billion euro, with €130 million of it owed to ACC Bank.

 

The decision by the Irish Supreme Court last week to overturn an earlier ruling for protection is based on the principle that the 3 year survival plan provided by The Zoe Group and independent accountants was hinged on their prediction of the recovery rate of the Irish real estate market, a rate that could not be satisfactorily evidenced. A provisional liquidator has been appointed to two of Mr. Carroll's six companies held under The Zoe Group.

 

Should Mr. Carroll's properties be placed on the market, their current depressed values are estimated to be around €300 million, an amount considerably less that the €1.3 billion owed, the market will then be overflowing with cheap alternative accommodations and office facilities, further reducing the already beleaguered property market. However the Irish governments National Asset Management Agency, who are preparing to start buying up bad bank loans, have indicated that it will consider the long term value of these properties when placing a value on them.

 

Either way, the Irish real estate market and economy is looking at a long and treacherous road to recovery. Should The Zoe Groups assets be sold at their current value, property values will decline even further. If however, they are sold at values high enough to satisfy their indebtedness then the Irish government and ultimately the Irish taxpayers will pay the price.

 

With hundreds of acres of property, particularly along the west coast of Ireland being owned by Americans, the effects of Liam Carroll's collapse will be felt by many Irish Americans here too.

 

Have you ever considered buying property in Ireland and if you did when did you acquire it? Was is during the real estate boom of recent years?

 

 

 

In my previous post I told you about how I had suggested to an agent that we meet at Starbucks in order to visit with each other as he was considering joining our company.

At the time of my suggestion he seemed to be surprised that I would suggest Starbucks as the venue and I was equally surprised that he thought that there was anything unprofessional about that.

Well I am pleased to report that it was a very successful meeting despite any reservations about the location.

As for the venue, I explained to him that since we office out of our homes and since I had never met him before personal safety dictates that our first meeting take place in a public place.

I went on to tell him that Starbucks is a well known company that many people are familiar with and therefore will be comfortable in.

It is also the type of place that will not create any awkward moments when the employees start pushing you too leave.

I realize that there are many meetings that would not be appropriate to hold there but for the purpose of ours it was the perfect location.

I think suggesting that a buyer or seller expose their confidential and personal information in such a place would not be wise but to just meet and chat, agent to agent, It provided a relaxed atmosphere, a safe place for strangers to meet and a place where even those with slight reservations can be comfortable enough to make decisions.

Personally I think it's the perfect location, we were all on neutral territory, we were not discussing anything that was too personal and I also got to leave a couple of my business cards there as well.

So thumbs up for meetings at Starbucks and I guess the poets and the thinkers of the past were smiling down on us for this one.

 

Sometimes agents can get confused with all of the different options out there…

Do I get a template site from iHouse, or is Agent Image better?

Do template sites rank lower in search engines?

Is it worth it for me to invest in a custom designed site?

Let me take a second to clear up some of the gossip about template websites, and at the same time shed some light on the “essentials” that every template website needs to have.

The Good:

Cost~

Hands down template websites are the cheapest option out there. They range from $0 to $250/month and you can cease use at any time. The cost of a template website generally will include some kind of hosting service and even domain registration.

Build Time~

A template website can be live within hours of purchase. With most custom designed websites the process can take anywhere from 1 month to 4 months depending on the complexity of the website.

After all who wants to wait for a website when they can have one up NOW.

Editable~

Most template sites come with a content management system (CMS). Essentially this allows the user to login to the website and quickly make changes to content.

Custom designed websites will charge more for this functionality; however it is also more custom tailored to fit your individual needs, making it harder to accidentally change something you don’t want to.

Tools~

Many good template sites have deals with certain software creators and IDX companies that can help you. These relationships result in functionality embedded within your template site that some custom designers don’t know anything about. (IE: MLS listings automatically updated on your page).

The Bad:

Ownership~

Stop paying the template site company for a month and see what happens. Chances are your website will vanish until you pony up the dough. This is because you don’t own that website, and you don’t have any rights to the server space that it is occupying.

Don’t kid yourself. Even if you own the domain (http://www.thedomainishere.com) you still don’t own the content that is currently occupying that space. Think of it like owning the land while renting the house that sits on it. Sound like a messed up relationship? It is. But ownership isn’t right for everyone.

Sloppy Coding~

The average template site provider out there couldn’t tell you what “cascading style sheets” and “clean semantic markup” mean. Many of them do not wish to “update” their template’s code because it would cost money. So it becomes more and more outdated as the years go buy.

Once it starts to look old, template companies will sometimes reskin the website. They do this by keeping the same basic code and updating old images so that it has a fresh look.

Pop the hood and you see the same old mess that was always there.

Here is a list of things to make sure that your template site has:

Table-less HTML coding that complies with W3C standards.

All styles and positioning to be done in an external cascading style sheet (CSS).

All Javascripting needs to be in an external file.

A robots.txt file (very important to have, generally found at http://www.yoursitehere.com/robots.txt.

A .htaccess file.

A sitemap.xml or sitemap.html document; generally found at http://www.yoursitehere.com/sitemap.html.

Ability to update meta title, description, keywords, and content tags.

User friendly URLs!!! (This is essential to good SEO and client navigation)

User Friendly: http://www.yoursitehere.com/search-for-homes.html

Versus: http://www.yoursitehere.com/search.html?LinkID=1451&title=Our%20Listings

If your template site is lacking any of these main components you could suffer severely in search engine rankings or even client usability. In some cases Google can’t crawl your site easily while in other situations your clients are stuck with long load times.

Additionally some template sites do not look the same across multiple browsers. Sections of the website could be shifted or broken on Safari while on Internet Explorer it looks good.

Uniqueness~

How important are first impressions? Think… meeting the girlfriend’s parents for the first time… or even some of those interesting first dates you have been on. First impressions are everything.

Your website is the first impression that many potential buyers and sellers will have of you. So shouldn’t the face that represents you on the web be as unique as you are?

If you have a template website you are risking not standing out from the crowd. By definition the website is a “template.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of real estate agents out there would have the same exact website as you.

Which leads me to the final two points…

The Ugly:

Uniqueness of Content~

While the main design also is identical to other real estate agents websites… most template providers have templates that come prefilled with pages of information that is useful to potential buyers and sellers.

Sounds good doesn’t it? Why generate all that content yourself when it is provided there for you. Let me enlighten you. Google does not like duplicate content. They like original, helpful, and consistently updated content. This is under “The Ugly” section because it can be EXTREMELY hurtful to your page rankings in the major search engines.

Let’s look at it from Google/Yahoo’s perspective. It sees 200-7000 sites out there that not only revolve around real estate… but also have the same coding layout of pages, and the same content on those pages. You think you will see page one results with that? Doubt it.

Lumped In, Kicked Out~

Sometimes template sites do things that put them on Google/Yahoo’s bad list. You better believe that your website loses a gold star when it is connected with the provider. Additionally, sometimes just being a template site can hurt your rankings if it is evident to the search engine. Google and Yahoo haven’t seemed to have cast their final vote quite yet on where template sites stand in the pecking order.

Recently Advanced Access, among others, has become a target of Google’s and some are finding their website drop dramatically in the rankings.

In Summation:

Templates~

Templates are a godsend for new agents trying to get their feet wet. They are cheap, go up fast, and provide an excellent base to build on.

Additionally, if you do your research and sign on with a good template company that knows SEO well, and follows the latest coding standards, you could end up ranking quite high on some of the major search engines.

***Note: Even the best template companies will come with prefilled information and pre-made pages. Delete the content and start from scratch! If you are going to go with a template site, the least you can do is try and make your content unique. Otherwise it will be even more of an uphill battle when you are trying to get ranked by search engines.

If you are a more experienced agent and are ready to make this your professional career… you might consider researching a custom web design solution.

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Upcoming Blog Post Preview~

I have tried to provide a fair, balanced, and truthful view of template companies in the above blog post. But in the name of full disclosure I should make it known that I own a custom web design company that specializes in the real estate industry. Below is a preview of my next blog post.

On average custom web designs require an investment initially, without any monthly payments down the road. 50% of that is paid up front and 50% of that is paid upon completion. After that it is yours forever.

The design is 100% unique and made from scratch with search engine optimization and user experience in mind. This allows not only for increased visibility in search engines… but when you are found it allows you to really show your clients what you are about. Here are examples of two of our clients that have a lot of personality in their websites.

Trident Realty Group – A Southwest Austin Real Estate Company

Austin Music Realty – A Creative Agent, For Creative People

All content is created with keywords and industry knowledge that is helpful to your customers.

Unique integration options like MLS search, Blog integration, and content management systems are available.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next blog post for a comprehensive breakdown of what a good “custom web design company” should offer its clients.

Downtown Bryan already boasts a fiberoptic center, known as “Fibertown”. This fiberoptic hub gives Bryan College Station the technological edge. Being connected to Fibertown is an incredible technological advantage to major companies because of the speed, reliability, and storage that Fibertown offers. Since it opened in 2003 Fibertown has developed 65,000 square feet of space and is currently contracted as a refuge for companies that could have to flee natural disasters. During Hurricane Ike 120 employees transferred their operations from the Houston area to Bryan College Station. These companies and employees relied on Bryan College Station’s fiberoptic hub to keep their companies running during the disaster. Fibertown recently announces a 3.2 million dollar expansion that will go towards developing more of its 145,000 square foot facility. This continual technological expansion of the Bryan College Station area goes to show that despite any economic downturns, Bryan College Station continues to thrive on the cutting edge.

If you are interested in investing in real estate in Bryan College Station, or if you would like to buy or sell a home in Bryan College Station, contact us immediately. Specializing in luxury real estate, Cortiers Luxury Realty is the premier real estate company in Bryan College Station. Contact us online at www.CortiersRealEstate.com or call the office at 979-985-5610.