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.
Are you looking for ways to cut your vehicle costs? or trying to be a better green citizen when it comes to your driving habits?
Here are a couple of new services that can help you with that:
1. ZipCar.com - Zipcars live near where you work and play. MINIs, trucks, hybrids and SUVs available by the hour or day—gas and insurance included. Zipcar is the world’s largest car sharing and car club provider. Share Zipcars in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC.
2. ParkatMyHouse.com - ParkatmyHouse.com is a brand new and innovative service which aims to provide affordable and fine -free parking by enabling property-owners to rent out their empty driveways, garages, car parks etc to drivers needing somewhere to park.
3. PickupPal.com - PickupPal allows a private vehicle engaged in a transportation event (a one-way trip from A to B) to be matched intelligently and dynamically over the Internet to a pickup location (someone or something) along its planned route anywhere in the world.
There are lots of real estate focused seminars coming up in the next few months all across North America. If you can make one or some, do it. Great speakers, great information, great opportunity.
March 27th, Atlanta, GA: REtech South - Large line up of real estate bloggers as Speakers
April 17th, Irvine, CA - 4RealzEd - Super Real Estate Blogger Dustin Luther’s Workshop
April 17th, Seattle, WA - Reachd - Learn about Google Adwords within Zillow’s offices
April 24th, Vancouver, BC - Reachd - Search Engine Optimization hands on training
May 18th - 20th, Phoenix, AZ - BloodHound - Social Media Marketing Conference for Realtors
July 23rd - 25th, San Francisco, CA - Inman - Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008
Marketing guru, Seth Godin wrote a great post today in his blog about the real estate market and Realtors specifically. Here are a few snippets:
“Plan A: You should quit selling real estate.”
“Some of you will stick with the standard business card with the standard photo, the standard office and the standard ad strategy and the standard approach to making the phone ring. It’s going to be a long haul if that’s your route.”
“The ones that are left, that’s you, can consider Plan B:
If you’re not going to be able to make a living by taking orders, by selling houses the way everyone else does, by using the never-ending rise in real estate prices to make sales, then what are you going to do? Whining is not an option.
In fact, I think this is an extraordinary opportunity for you.”“The first is to become the expert in what you do….”
Check out the rest of Seth’s post about marketing real estate. It is an interesting take on the market and it has NOTHING to do with the listing. It is all about becoming an expert in your field.
The Ubertor Realtor website software is always a work in progress. We take great pride in making the system better every day. As many of you know the Ubertor system has some really great search engine optimization (SEO) features that are built right into every website. From the basic structure of the websites to the automated SEO features our software can help you be found under the terms that you are striving for.
Above and beyond the basics, the Ubertor software has what we call the “SEO Enhancement” which is a feature set that has a one time fee attached to it and unlocks some really powerful tools.
Features for Static pages
- Edit page titles
- Edit meta keywords
- Edit meta descriptions
- Edit sitemap descriptionBlog Post features
- create custom page titlesProperties pages
- custom page title dynamically generated using additional features green box, address, and neighbourhood field
- H tags created using the address, price and neighbourhood fieldsMarketing Tab
- Create unlimited # of landing pages (built specifically for agents using pay per click marketing)
- edit the robot.txt file
Now, our advanced users have no problem with these features and they take full advantage of them. On the other hand, there are some real estate agents that want to learn more about the search engines. While they have a general idea, there are still questions about some of these features.
Well, Ubertor’s Approved Vendor, Reachd.com has come up with a 3 hour training bootcamp like no other. The bootcamp will be held on January 24th, 2008 from 9am - 12pm on the 4th Floor of YWCA in downtown Vancouver.
It is limited to 20 agents and there are only 18 17 spots left. The cost is $100.00. The bootcamp will run through all of the SEO Enhancement features so that you can follow the “best practices” when managing your website.
Check out the complete details over at Reachd. You must register online and the spots will go fast.
Check out their details page as it gives you more information as well as some great benefits and bonuses involved for attendees. Any questions about their event please contact Reachd.com directly.
Here is an interesting video created by the team over at 1000wattblog.com that profiles real estate buyers and sellers:
Interesting Article about New York City housing prices… what does this mean for Vancouver?
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Manhattan real estate continues to buck national trends - New York home prices soared during the last three months of the year, according to several surveys released Thursday.
The median (midpoint) price for a condo or co-op apartment rose 15 percent to $915,000, according to the Corcoran Group, one of New York’s biggest brokers. Surveys by two other brokerages, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead, showed 14 percent growth, to $828,000.
A survey by Prudential Douglas Elliman showed lower growth, at 6.4 percent, but a median price of $850,000.
Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo run Capulet Communicationstogether. They do web marketing and social media relations, mostly for technology companies. They are based in Vancouver, but they spent most of 2007 working and living in Malta. Their plan for 2008 is to live in Morocco.
If Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin mean nothing to you or if your looking to understand more about social media marketing then Darren and Julie’s new ebook is for you. It is an easy read with examples tips.
You can buy their ebook here for $29
Here is a little video they put together explaining more about their book.
Realtor website marketing company RealtySupport.ca will customize your website with a temporary holiday look for $40.00! Click here to check out their promotion and some examples of the customization that they have done. What a great way to keep your look fresh and unique.
Leon Ng, the President of the Real Estate Channel emailed me a few days ago to let me know that one of my feature requests for their system had been completed. Hundreds of agents use the Real Estate Channel to promote their listings and their services and now you can embed their videos into your website.
It is an excellent way to take your video and get more exposure for it. All you need to do is grab the embed code and pop it into your website or blog.
Here is Ubertor client Shelly Smee’s latest Real Estate Channel interview:
What a great way to gain more exposure to your videos!!
This is a really great feature and should be utilized by every Real Estate Channel customer. Nice work Leon!
