So like everyone else, I’m pretty sick and tired of all the constant negative talk about the real estate industry that the media seems to spew on us on almost a daily basis. It really gets to me when they make huge sweeping generalizations about the real estate market across the nation. So with the help of some of my close real estate friends, I thought I would provide a glimpse into some local markets to see how the “feet [...]

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What do you think it signals when a city or town has more homes in foreclosure than traditional listings?

a)      Buyer beware - it means that market is headed for a fall

b)      Buy opportunity - it means buyers have leverage

c)      Neither

Please provide your answer in the comment section with any additional tidbits of information you might have.

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It has been a rough couple of years in the real estate industry but there are plenty of brokerages that are still kicking and doing business. Now the landscape has definitely changed but brokerages that are not only surviving but thriving in this less than stellar real estate environment have one thing in common…they get it.

Take River City Real Estate for example. A three-office brokerage on the outskirts of Saint Louis would probably not be the type of brokerage you [...]

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Like many folks, I lived through the .com bust and learned a great lesson.  Terrific businesses can be built during tough times, but only if they’re adding real value to their customers.

Fortunately our mission has always been to deliver measurable ROI for Real Estate brokers.  The fact that that is working is incredibly exciting.  Despite ad $ being cut left and right, we’re bringing more clients on the platform [...]

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We’re pleased to announce a partnership with First American Corelogic today that brings the most complete set of foreclosed home listings to Roost.com.  Now, in addition to Homes for Sale in the MLS, Homes for Sale by owner and New Construction property listings Roost can offer consumers access to over 1.5M properties in the foreclosure [...]

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Nominations are open for the Crunchies 2008 Awards! You can check them out here:

Nominations are open until Dec. 10 – if you love Roost, and think it’s the best place to find homes for sale, please nominate us for ….

… Best Startup

…Roost has already been awarded the most innovative technology of the year

… Best Design

You can also nominate our fearless leader, Alex Chang …

… Best Startup CEO

…he’s [...]

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Part 3: Follow Up

We are now dealing with the most critical piece of the online real estate puzzle…follow up. It is one thing to capture leads on your website but you need to contact those leads immediately. Most consumers now expect communication within 30 minutes of their inquiry. Some are even tougher and demand a response within 10 minutes.

What happens if you don’t respond in 30 minutes? The consumers go somewhere else. So now you’ve spent all this money and [...]

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Part 2: Lead Capture

In part one of our series we talked about traffic. Now imagine you are getting all this great traffic to your website but you have no intuitive way to capture any leads from that traffic. Big problem! Back in the day, most real estate companies were using Google and Yahoo! almost exclusively to drive traffic to their websites. When you developed your online ad, it was built with the thought of sending traffic directly to the [...]

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Part 1: Traffic Sources

So you’ve been using different sources to drive traffic to you real estate website but you are not seeing the results you’d like. What could be the problem? Well it could be several things, but one of the culprits could be bad traffic. I know it sounds strange but not all web traffic is created equal. It has different levels of quality depending on the source of said traffic.

For example, you can send a ton of traffic [...]

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I read a story earlier this week on Inman News that excited me just a little bit. The story “Online ad spending defies economy” written by Matt Carter provided insight into what real estate brokerages are doing with their advertising spend and the pattern it has been following for the last several years.

With the housing decline and the heavy usage of the Internet by real estate consumers, brokerages are finally coming to grips that they must use advertising sources that [...]

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