HomeGain News
New Source4Sellers™ Features
HomeGain has re-launched its instant home valuation tool, which gives Source4Sellers agents new benefits. Sellers requesting a home valuation will now see a Source4Sellers agent as the featured agent in their market area under a banner called Your Agent Connection™. The banner will display the Source4Sellers agent's photo and contact information alongside the instant home valuation results.
Read more about the new features of Source4Sellers
Yahoo! Re-Launches HomeGain’s Find A REALTOR® Site
HomeGain and Yahoo! Real Estate have re-launched the newly designed Find A Realtor® site. Featuring an improved pathway for consumers to connect with agents, and offering articles about today’s real estate market, the site is one more way for HomeGain agents to benefit from their membership.
See Find A REALTOR® site on Yahoo! Real Estate
Did you know? Read what else is new with HomeGain – and some great real estate articles – in the NewsRoom. |
Ask HomeGain
Dear HomeGain,
In the last newsletter, you introduced the ability for agents to upload their
own listings onto the HomeGain site. Can you tell me why uploading your listings
online is so popular and why should I do this?
-- Jeanine Smith, AZ
Dear Jeanine,
Many agents like yourself are wondering the same thing as more and more companies like HomeGain offer this service to their customers. The primary reason you should upload your listings is to get the extra exposure. In a time when even the National Association of Realtors® is beginning to acknowledge the declining market, any extra exposure for your listings can only help.
However, many agents see this opportunity as an extra benefit to mention during a listing presentation for a potential customer. It can be a powerful statement to say that “not only will your home be featured on my website, but on over a dozen other sites as well.” Even if your next buyer does not find your listing through one of these services, the perceived value it presents to your next customer should make the decision to upload listings an easy one.
Good luck.
Regards,
HomeGain Agent Success Team
Did you know? You can get $50 for each referral of a new agent who signs up with Source4Sellers or BuyerLink. |
Agent Success
Why subscribe to a lead generation service?
by Peggy Boehm, Director, Client Services
Licensed Real Estate Broker, CA and WA
Dear Agents,
You may be an agent already signed up with HomeGain, but wonder what other online solutions would help increase your business. Or, you may be an agent not currently working with any lead generation companies, and making things work primarily through referral business.
Either way, I wanted to talk about how it’s becoming increasingly important to have some kind of Internet marketing situation set up for yourself. It’s important to have a mix of online and off-line marketing, but you might want to consider weighing more heavily in the “online marketing” approach based on what we’re seeing in consumer trends and behavior.
It’s not easy for every agent to get online and be successful, especially if you haven’t done it before. I always say to my team that it’s important to work smarter, not harder. That’s where lead generation companies come into play. It’s a “work smarter” solution to helping agents break into the game – it gives them a chance to compete with the pros.
Although criticized by some, lead generation companies like HomeGain.com are in the lead generation business to help agents grow their business by delivering qualified leads. They also help new agents or small realties establish repeat and referral business, which is a difficult thing to do in a referral-based industry.
The leads that HomeGain provides can, and often do, turn into business – business that you may not have had otherwise. And once you convert their leads into new clients, you will garner repeat business from their friends and family.
I just read an article on April 6th in Inman News about how lead generation will occur in the future. It said that “if you're not spending at least $2,000 per month in pay-per-click advertising, either as a broker or an agent, you will be better off buying leads from companies such as HomeGain that have the wherewithal to generate top search-engine placement and deliver leads in real time.”
And I just have to mention the fact that our agent, Eric Pakulla with RE/MAX Advantage Realty in Maryland, just passed the million dollar mark from closing AgentEvaluator leads!
Let me share recent statistics that tell us about working with online buyers and sellers from an enlightening report by The California Association of REALTORS® and their “2006 Internet vs. Traditional Home Buyer Study”. They found some startling numbers that are going to make you want to get online as quickly as possible, if you aren’t already:
- The percentage of all homebuyers who use the Internet has increased from 28% in 2000, to 70% in 2006. Consider this: if you are not online, not only are you not meeting these consumers, but consumers from your “sphere of influence” are online and may be missing you.
- Internet buyers, in 2006, spent only 2.2 weeks looking for a home with their agent before making a purchase. This compares to 7.1 weeks for traditional buyers. That means you are spending 69% more time with buyers who come to you through traditional, offline means, than the Internet. Sixty-nine percent is a significant amount of time you could instead redirect toward face time with other clients – face time that would result in even more closed sales, or (a novel thought for those of us in the industry) free time for you and your family!
- During the home buying process, Internet buyers look at only 6.7 homes on average. This compares to 15.4 homes for traditional buyers, or about twice as many homes or over 8 homes per buyer. Consider if you were to close 20 buyers in a year, that can quickly total to another 174 homes you would need to show in order to close that many homes.
- Taking that a step further, how long does it take you, or one of your buyer’s agents, to show 174 homes? If, on average, it takes 1 hour (including prep), that’s over 4 weeks worth of work over the course of a year. You could have gone on a fabulous 4-week vacation instead! And, this number does not take into account the many more homes you previewed and screened ahead of time for your qualified buyers.
Take time to discover what online strategies work optimally for you, perfect those strategies, and you will find your online real estate business increasing beyond what you might have imagined.
Regards,
Peggy Boehm
Did you know? As a HomeGain
member, you can |
Local Agents
HomeGain Clubs
Congratulations to HomeGain's newest Gold Club and Platinum Club members. These members represent our top performing real estate professionals nationwide.
March New Members
Agents who have closed $125,000 in gross commissions from HomeGain leads
Gary Mercer |
Karen Mason |
Christiane Qualls |
Joe Jimenez |
Phil Wineman |
|
Agents who have closed $75,000 in gross commissions from HomeGain leads
Nancy Watkins |
Carol Ceddia |
Harlan Furbush |
Joyce Konnerth |
Cesi Pagano |
Coleen M. Hugney, GRI |
Gail Williams |
Barbara Higgins |
Patricia Mancini |
Marita Donohue |
- Quality leads
- Cool tools
- Real-time alerts
- Free training
- Rewards
Free webinars, local tradeshows and special events:
- May 1
Source4Sellers Webinar - May 1
AgentEvaluator Webinar - May 2
BuyerLink Webinar - May 2
BuyerLink Advanced Webinar - May 3
AgentEvaluator Webinar
Click here for more dates and times.
