Ubertor Real Estate Blog

I stopped by a community event in Kerrisdale today. For those that don’t know, Kerrisdale is an affluent area within Vancouver that is hard to find a livable home under 1 million dollars (CDN or USD). My big question is - where are the Realtors?

With a few thousand people on a single street, all within walking distance home owners or potential home owners - you would think Realtors would be all over the place. Instead, there were Kerrisdale businesses and charities on the street showcasing their brands and products. Why are there no Realtors visible? Where are the real estate companies? I thought about this during my visit to Kerrisdale, so I took my dog and wondered around as I thought maybe I had not seen them yet…..

I did see Daniel Lavery’s baseball team - which was great. He is a sponsor of a little league team in Kerrisdale and his team was in the Kerrisdale Day Parade holding his sign. Great Work!

A few Sutton balloons were seen, but I did not see where they were handing them out.

In my opinion, this is an excellent venue for real estate involvement. Where are the real estate companies? Why do you not have a big tent? a ride for kids? a visible presence?

Here are a few pictures from the event:

h/t - Joel

21 Vancouver business owners traveled to New York this past week to meet with the famous marketing guru and best selling author Seth Godin. This intimate private event was setup as an opportunity for Seth to speak with us about marketing and being “remarkable” in all that we do. Plus we all had an opportunity to discuss our businesses with him and get his feedback, ideas, thoughts, etc on our specific businesses and industries.

Lots was gained by this exclusive opportunity. I took tons of notes from the full day event but wanted to point out a couple of things that Seth said that I found really interesting with regard to the real estate market.

First, he mentioned that 91% of real estate agents in the US don’t speak with their client after the closing of the deal. His point was that this is a tragedy and a loss of future opportunity. He talks about how marketing to people is difficult, especially if they are not listening. But past clients are listening and by marketing to them, you will see more results.

Seth also mentioned that if he was a real estate agent he would run a workshop on how to sell your home without a real estate agent. The idea being that it gets a bunch of people interested in selling their homes in a room with you, so that you can show them how much work can and does go into it. He said, some will go ahead and try and sell it themselves, but some will decide that it is too much work. It is an interesting thought.

Lots was gained by this workshop. It was a pleasure meeting Seth and having the opportunity to meet with him in such a small setting. Here are a few photos from the event:

Michael Jagger, Seth Godin and Stephen Jagger

The Group (sorry for the fuzzy photo)

The Vancouver business owners (with 4 New Yorkers) and Seth Godin

Gary Vaynerchuk sounds off for 120 seconds on the fact that our technology is moving so fast that “anything you do is going to be known”. Take a moment to watch this video, I think he is on the right track.

Kelvin Humenny of North Vancouver has created inHabit which designs, builds and installs small prefabricated dwellings for art, music, work and living. Could be a good for a place like Whistler or a cabin that is in need of an extra room.

Greg has some interesting offline promotion techniques for promoting your new listings:

“We print business card-sized promotional pieces to advertise our open houses. These are distributed to every house in the neighborhood, since the neighbors may know someone who wants to live nearby.

During the school day, there will be more than 100 cars in the school parking lot, most of them driven there from out of the neighborhood. Some of those folks are sick of commuting.

Most local retailers will have some kind of bulletin board. Your cards belong there.”

continue…

from Jim, via Twitter.

Seth Godin recorded a podcast with a few big name authors the other day. Definitely worth the time to listen. Along with Seth is Chris Anderson the author of The Long Tail, Tim Ferris the author of the Four Hour Work Week and John Jantsch.

(click on the play button to listen - no software needed to hear podcast)
boomp3.com

Think ActiveRain, Trulia Voices, Zillow Discussions but then take out the broad nature of those sites and you have MyRealPlace.com. MyRealPlace.com is a “complete realty resource for buyers, sellers, investors and realty professionals” specifically targeting the lower mainland of British Columbia. I met with co-founder Jonathan Lyon yesterday and discussed his new business. They are quite new (June 07) and seem to have quite a few users. Take a moment to check out their site and let me know what you think - just add comments to this post. Maybe having a real estate community website super focused on a specific area is the future.

Our pal Shane Gibson has posted some sales help videos on his sales blog (http://www.salesacademy.ca) Check them out. Shane has lots of interesting things to say and many helpful tips for those who want a hand in the sales world. Shane has also been a speaker at our Vancouver Real Estate Technology Meetup.