Ubertor Real Estate Blog

I was chatting with Tom and Anita at the last Vancouver Real Estate Professionals Tech Meetup the other day and we had a great chance to talk about real estate technology as well as what is out and what is coming soon. It was a great opportunity to catch up and listen to what others were saying about the market. I just received a great email from Tom that included a testimonial about our products and services and I wanted to take a moment to post it here:

November 10, 2006

Hi Steve,

Just wanted to thank you for your ongoing help with our Ubertor websites.
As Realtors, we don’t have time to invest in website development and maintenance.
Ubertor is a great solution that offers quick and easy functionality with just the right level of custom features for our needs.

What we appreciate most from you and the Ubertor team is the level of support, quick response, and your dedication to training. We regularly learn something new and valuable from you that we put to immediate use to improve site exposure, content and overall performance.

We’ve attended presentations from other website designers all claiming to have the ultimate solution to Internet marketing, including the so-called VOWs. None have come close to the level of features, know-how, support, and ease of doing business offered by Ubertor / Combustion Labs.

We are big fans! Keep up the good work.

Anita Schmitt and Tom Davis, Realtors – Royal LePage Northshore
www.anitaschmitt.com www.furrycreekrealestate.ca

I just got back from our Inaugural Vancouver Real Estate Professional Meetup that we held at Diner in Yaletown. It was a great success as we had over 30 agents show up.

A big thanks to Heather from Diner who opened her restaurant on an otherwise closed night to host our Meetup. Not only did she graciously open her door to our group but she unexpectedly fired up the kitchen and put out some hors d’oeuvres. Be sure to pop by Diner next time you are in Yaletown for lunch or dinner.

The format was a little loose as this was the initial meetup and we wanted to go with the flow a bit to see how things went. At about 7:00pm we took control of the group to do a little presentation on HouseValues.com, Zillow.com, Trulia.com as well as touched on JohnLScott.com. The theme was about the direction the internet is going and how information is being opened up and let loose. Locking down, login required and password protection are all old school thinking. Providing information to your users is key. The real key is providing value to your users. The real estate listings (ie the data) is not the value.

All Realtors can provide the data, the real key is providing value.
Value = Education, Experience, Opinion, Feedback, Knowledge etc.

I have already received some great feedback about this Meetup… he is what a few agents had to say:

“Thanks for going the extra mile to provide some ‘value added service’ with your social this evening. It is great to know that you are on top of web based marketing and keep us realtor informed! ” - Joel Carcone - www.livinglonsdale.com

“I just wanted to say thank you for spending some time to speak with me tonight regarding our website and where the internet is going. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the talk you gave at the “Diner”, it was very informative. ” - Diane Cardoso - www.ownanicehome.com

“Ubertor shines again - this company is very pro-active in bringing the newest technology and info as to what is happening in the web world. Great company, great job. Attending was definitely worthwhile.” - Helga Lauckner - www.helgalauckner.com

“Amazing!! Lots of people for networking, and the presentation is fantastic!! I really enjoy the whole experience. Michael Stephenson and Stephen Jagger are true genius. Their event are enlighting! Some top realtors even credit their success to these 2 genious! WOW!!” - Ian Sullivan - www.yaletownpropertyguy.com

Interested to attend our next Meetup? We have already set it up for next Monday. Please RSVP here if you would like to attend.

Our software is quite flexible and Nathan Justus in Seattle is showing what it can do. Take a peek at his site and you will see how he is using other technologies (rockyou.com, myspace.com, and bolt.com) to customize his site further and drive traffic. Also, I see that he has posted on his blog, his reasons for picking Ubertor as his website provider. Here is what he had to say:

I started out looking for website companies that were specially tailored to real estate agents. I came across a few that seemed to have a quality product and had all the latest technology integrated. What I was finding though was the cost was still quite high just to get started. I’m talking $700 dollars just to get started and then we still had the monthly costs, a contract etc. This was discouraging me because my marketing budget is limited. I started to go to template sites and explore the flash sites and found some really cool templates and cool flash animation and the prices aren’t too bad. The problem with these templates is they aren’t designed for real estate agents which means no built in system that manages your listings and sales. Having a system in place that has the latest technology and top notch support and a pretty darn attractive product, is hard to beat.

I came across the company called Ubertor which just happened to be moving into the Seattle market at the time I was looking for something to start my web presence. I was fortunate enough to see a sales presentation in my office at Skyline in Everett, and I was very impressed. One of the co-founder’s Steve Jagger was pitching the product that day and sold me. Ubertor offers a product that is just as good if not better than all the other companies I called. They have a better hold on technology that works and understand and take the time to explain what is truly of value to search engines, Mainly Google. The company is highly integrated with Google and Craigslist which most other’s aren’t, the blogging feature built into the website is spectacular partly automated when changes to listings are made. The product Ubertor is user friendly and completely unique and far from cookie cutter. No contract and having a quality product and unparalleled support makes Ubertor my choice for websites for Seattle Real Estate Agents.

Why Ubertor? Why not! Just look at my site www.soldbyjustus.com

Trish Anderson has been a client of ours for a few years now. But she was only using the old version of our listings engine within a website that was not build or maintained by us. A few months ago, Trish decided to take advantage of all of the new features of our Ubertor software and move to our Ubertor Realtor website system completely. Here is an email that I received from Trish about her experiences and fear of making changes to her site:

Hi Stephen

This is just a little note to let you know how pleased I am that I made the move to Ubertor. As you know I had a website designed, built and marketed professionally some years ago. This site was and is a great source of business for me so I was really nervous about changing anything. I wondered, why mess with something that is working? However the site was hard to work with and I had to pay people to do changes to the site, upload photos, etc. etc. I was not skilled enough to do my own work on it. My new Ubertor site is great! It doesn’t take much training to be really good at managing my own site! I am really happy with it.
I still stay up were I was in the search engines too.

Thanks

Trish Anderson

A new client of ours, Kris Berg, emailed me a wonderful testimonial about her new Ubertor website. Kris is a real estate agent in San Diego who just moved to Prudential California Realty and is a very active blogger.

Steve,

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the fabulous products you offer and for your assistance in getting our new site up and running. We are always looking for ways to improve our online image and streamline our business. Your website “template” has provided us that opportunity.

For many years, I have been personally designing and managing our website and have resisted converting to a template-based site fearing that I would have to compromise content for presentation. Ubertor’s product was the first I found that offers the flexibility I desired. The sites are simple enough for the novice yet offer the more sophisticated user the tools required for full content control, such as access to code and the ability to add and edit pages and site navigation. Of course, your featured homes presentation software is among the best I have encountered. Finally, your technical support was terrific and contributed to my accomplishing the unthinkable. I was able to completely transfer our site to the new format and server in a matter of days!

I am convinced that the new site offers the same unique and extensive content that our clients have come to expect but in a visually enhanced format with improved navigation. I am equally confident that we have not only improved our online presence but have become more efficient in the process, as management of the site and future updates will be accomplished more easily, allowing us to spend more of our time on the business of selling homes.

Thank you again. We wish you continued success.

Kris Berg
Broker Associate
Prudential California Realty
(858)530-BERG
www.SanDiegoCastles.com

I received an email this evening from Aleta Thompson in West Seattle. She is a client of ours and has been for a couple of months now. Actually on a side note, kind of interesting how we met, myself and my business partner attended a forum a few months ago where Zillow, HouseValues, Redfin and Real Property Associates were speaking about the real estate industry. Anyways, at that dinner, I happened to be sitting next to Aleta Thompson of Keller Williams. Aleta signed up with one of our websites…. and here is the email I received from her tonight:

Dear Stephen, a month ago I Googled myself and it took numerous pages for me to finally find myself on the standard KW website and also in an obscure reference to a conference I participated in during the 1980s. I have been diligently working on my Ubertor website for the past couple of weeks and it is paying off. Tonight I Googled myself to see if I was making any progress and here is what greeted my eyes, I am at #1 and also at #4!! (see below)

The next goal will be to come up somewhere in the first ten pages when someone searches on Seattle real estate.

Feel free to use this to promote your outstanding service.
Aleta Thompson
Real Estate Consultant
Keller Williams Seattle Metro West
Cell: 206/261-1465
www.aletasellsseattle.com

I spoke with a few agents the other day from Victoria that we quite happy with their Ubertor sites as well as our customer service. I just received an email from Susan Pipes from DFH in Victoria about us and wanted to take a moment to pass it on. It is always great to have clients email us about their experiences with our system.

Hi Steve

I couldn’t be happier with my new Ubertor web site and the wonderful service that you provide. We really appreciate the time and patience by yourself today, and with Matt when he helped to set us up. It must be a special challenge dealing with us web newbies. It has been a huge learning curve, but one that has been fun and enjoyable. Thank you for being there and for providing this service.

Susan Pipes
DFH Real Estate
susanpipes.com

I received an email today from one of our sales team in Victoria. It is from a new client running on our Ubertor system.

“Hi Matt,

You and your buddies in the company are definitely onto a good thing, you should all be very proud of yourselves. You’re obvious full scope knowledge of Realtors needs, relaxed but comprehensive presentation skills and willingness to help has empowered people like Susan and I to dive into a self managed website.

Thank You and Cheers

Sandy”

Sandy McManus at DFH in Victoria
http://www.sandymcmanus.com

Joel Burslem runs a blog called The Future of Real Estate Marketing out of Portland Oregon and he and I spoke yesterday about our Ubertor software. He is doing some reviews of software providers that make it easy for Realtors to get online. Our Ubertor software is the one he chose to do first.

Here are a couple of quotes from his article:

“Playing around with their system, I found it extremely easy to get my listing on the Internet.”

“Ubertor is a small Real Estate software provider based out of Vancouver, Canada that is definitely worth checking out if you�re looking a simple, all-in-one solution to get your real estate business on the Internet.”

“its agent sites were all extremely well designed and very functional.”

To read his complete review click here

Here is a nice note from Steve Church of the Muljat Group in Bellingham, Washington:

To Whom It May Concern:

I bumped into Combustion at Ed.Con, the educational conference & trade show in Bellevue, WA., a couple of years ago. My first impression was whoa! Ever since switching to Combustion from my previous RE Website provider I have come to realize they are �The Cutting edge of RE website providers�. My site continues to get better with their ongoing new technology that Combustion has implemented into my site. This has become the best RE sales tool that I have ever invested in! I have referred other fellow agents within my office to their services & they all have been equally impressed. I must say I LOVE my website & the results it gets! Combustion was so easy to work with in tweaking my site & their support is super! There excellence continues to exceed my expectations. Use them�their GREAT!!!

Steven M. Church

(360) 650-5474 direct line
(360) 739-3030 cell phone
website: www.SteveChurch.com