MLS Listings for CT Real Estate with the CTMLS

New Photo Rules To Showcase Your Listings

By Adam | Published January 26, 2012

As you are well aware, there is a tremendous amount of CT real estate on the market these days. Making your listing stand out among the thousands of listings in Connecticut can be hard enough, but when you go online, you’re then competing with hundreds of thousands of listings.

It’s for this reason, CTMLS has changed our rules and regulations to allow our members to include 25 photos in your listings. This increase will allow you to not only showcase the traditional aspects of a piece of property, but it will allow you to focus on the unique features of a home that make it stand out from the rest.

This new rules change also makes it imperative that you continue to take stunning pictures that will help your property stand out from the pack online. But you’re not a photographer, how are you supposed to know how to take good pictures right?

One of our agents, who gets more property views through listing syndication then any other Connecticut listing agent, gave us a list of the seven things he keeps in mind when taking photos. Use these tips to make your photos pop.

1.) Take photos on a sunny day
2.) Take the broadest possible photos
3.) Shoot photos with a constant flash setting
4.) Turn on all lights
5.) Take photos of the room NOT the furniture in the room
6.) Put away personal and daily items
7.) Take close-ups of interesting details like fireplace/granite countertops/high end appliances

Keep in mind that CTMLS requires at least one photo be added to your listing within the first 48 hours it is on the MLS, but we recommend that you load ALL 25 pictures with the listing so it’s ready to go when it gets distributed to the web.

Do you have any great tips for shooting photos? Share them in the comments below.

Posted in Photos, Rules and Regulations | Tagged photos, rules and regulations | 13 Comments

To Pay Per Click, Or Not To Pay Per Click, That Is The Question

By Adam | Published January 25, 2012

I asked a question yesterday on our Facebook page that got some interesting responses. The question was a fairly straight forward one, “If I gave you $1,000,000 and you had to use it to market a single property, what would you spend the money on?” We’d love to have you weigh in on our Facebook page here.

Here are some of the responses we got:

Errol Flynn: A superbowl ad just to show off, lol

Ann Grant: With $1,000,000 I could spread that money out over a few venues. Internet, radio, TV, skywriting ads, billboards, etc. I would try to be as many places as possible.

Phil Zimbardi: Featured online

Rachel Minihan: Tearing out a horrible driveway and redoing it!

Jacklyn Tobin, Realtor: I would use the money to throw a huge catered Open House at the property for sale. I’d include a couple of celebrity chefs to draw in a crowd, and I’d also make it a fundraiser for a charity. People would get a free meal, a chance to donate some money to charity and the chance to see a celeb chef. This would be sure to garner national attention and thus more potential buyers.

Karen Nobleman West: Here in Miami top agents charter yachts to entertain clients and showcase shoreline homes… I’m just saying …..

Some really great, creative answers, but conspicuously missing was Pay Per Click advertising. REALTORS® spend a lot of time and money to market their properties and today, a whole lot of that money goes into featured listings on top real estate search sites. This can be a good use of money, but what if, for the same amount of money, sometimes even less money, you could reach thousands of people in the market for CT real estate before they even make it to those search sites.

This is the promise of Pay Per Click advertising.

Google gets 68% of all search traffic online. That means it gets a tremendous share of the real estate searches done on a daily basis. If you could capture a minuscule fraction of the search traffic going through Google each day, your leads would shoot through the roof. People that click on your ads would go directly to your website and would then enter your funnel instead of the funnel for major real estate search channels. You would get the lead. You would get the opportunity to turn that lead into a client.

Just a couple of things to remember when thinking about Pay Per Click though.

1.) Set a reasonable budget – you can go wild with keywords and blow your entire marketing budget in one month.

2.) Target your keywords – if you try to purchase “real estate” as your keyword your budget will likely be blown after one click. Instead, try to target “Your town, CT real estate.” This will give you a much smaller group of people searching for that term, but they will be qualified leads.

3.) TEST TEST TEST – don’t just start a campaign and let it run. Start a campaign, keep tabs on it weekly and make tweaks as you go to find out which keywords are converting into clients the best.

So, to pay per click, or not to pay per click, what is your answer?

Posted in Internet Marketing | Tagged google, Pay Per Click | 2 Comments

Find! The REAL CT Real Estate Market

By Adam | Published January 24, 2012

By now you probably know that over 90% of all home buyers start their search for CT real estate online. You might be surprised to learn that they are probably not getting the clearest picture of the CT real estate market, unless they are on CTReal.com.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you’re looking for a piece of property in Hartford. You start out at Trulia.com, a site that one of your friends told you about and they said that they had had luck on the site. You type Hartford, CT into the search box and voila you’ve got 544 results for Hartford CT homes for sale. Terrific right? It’s great, until you pick up the phone or click the e-mail button and find out from the listing agent that that house has already sold.

It must’ve just sold a few hours ago right? Why would it still be on the website?

Truth is, while it is important to be where consumers are, sometimes where the consumers are, is not the best place to find the most accurate information and Trulia is not the only offender. Take a look at how many listings there are in Hartford, CT according to some of the top real estate search sites.

Trulia: 544
Zillow: 523
REALTOR.com: 236

Look at the incredible discrepancies among these popular search sites. A search for Hartford, CT in MLXchange turns up a number actually closer to 160 listings. Since your clients can’t search MLXchange, the next best thing is CTReal.com where they will find an accurate amount of listings pulled directly from the MLS, 141 currently. (The small discrepancy in listings is a result of those Brokers who have opted out of CTReal.com)

CTReal.com is updated multiple times throughout the day and there is a direct feed from MLXchange to the site. It will always be the most accurate CT real estate search site on the web.

Send your clients there and they will never contact you about a listing that’s off the market again.

By the way, CTReal.com is on Facebook, like us there and spread the word. More visitors = more leads for YOU.

Posted in CTReal.com | Tagged MLXchange, Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow | Leave a comment

How’s The Weather For Your Showings This Weekend?

By Adam | Published January 20, 2012

Here at the CTMLS we are very lucky to have some incredibly talented people. We have skilled membership people, a great compliance department, technology gurus and even billing experts, but the talents of our staff go well beyond MLS duties. Sometimes these talents come in very handy.

Take for instance our Billing Assistant, Kathryn Kane, not only is she tremendous at her day to day job, but she keeps the office informed of impending weather on a regular basis. On a daily basis she gets bombarded with questions like, how much snow are we going to get, is it going to rain, how hot is it going to be this weekend. She dutifully answers all of these questions with a smile and an accuracy that I’ve never seen before.

With her forecasts our staff has made it home before bad weather hits and dressed for the right temperatures at the right times.

Now we’re bringing her talents to you so that you can be prepared for this weekend’s inclement weather. In her report below, Kathryn will let you know when the best time to schedule your showings will be as well as give a sneak peak at some possible down time for you to kick back, relax and enjoy yourself.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the freshly fallen snow. If you do schedule some showings this weekend, please be safe.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Picture Says A Thousand Words…How About Three?

By Adam | Published January 19, 2012

Do a search for CT real estate on any of the national search engines and you’ll find a complete list of CT homes for sale based on the criteria you’ve specified, but you’ll also get a whole bunch of other information surrounding those results that cloud your view.

Let’s try a search on Zillow.com for instance. The criteria I am going to use is Wallingford, CT 300,000 – 400,000. The search is pretty simple to use, but the results, that’s a whole other question. Take a look at what I get.

Click the image to view larger

Keep in mind, I am acting in the role of a consumer, coming to one of these search sites to FIND a piece of property. What am I presented with here? A map with dots on it, some advertising, featured partners and way down at the very bottom, I see a picture of the first property returned from my search criteria.

Let’s compare that with a screenshot from our public facing website CTReal.com using the exact same search criteria.

Click the image to view larger

What a difference. From the moment your search is complete you’ve got all of the properties that fit your criteria right in front of you without having to do any thinking at all.

I’m not just picking on Zillow either. Do a similar search on all of the major national real estate search sites and you’ll find similar displays and similar results.

The listing results view on CTReal.com is a one-of-a-kind layout that features three property photos. The reason it was designed this way was to give the consumer a clearer picture of what the home might be like. A single exterior photo cannot show that the kitchen has been remodeled or that the gleaming hard wood floors have been re-finished. This unique layout gives a full picture of each property allowing the consumer to make an informed decision without having to drill down to get more photos.

What do you think of this unique design for our listing results view on CTReal.com? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Posted in CTReal.com, Photos | Tagged CTReal.com, listing results view, photos | 4 Comments

What Is SOPA And How Could It Affect You

By Adam | Published January 18, 2012

If you’ve visited Google this morning you may have seen their blacked out logo, the above photo is a screenshot of the homepage. You might have also heard that Wikipedia has gone “black” for the next 24 hours. Just do a search for anything on Wikipedia and you’ll see what they’ve done.

So what’s all the hullabaloo?

These websites are protesting legislation that is currently being considered in the U.S. Congress called SOPA and PIPA. SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act and it’s sister legislation PIPA or Protect IP (Intellectual Property) Act are being introduced by Congress to combat piracy online. Seems like a pretty noble cause right? Well, a closer look at the legislation might give you pause.

These pieces of legislation provide for the ability for the U.S. Department of Justice to file an injunction to shut down any website who is posting OR linking to intellectual property that is under copyright. The provisions in the law allow for the shutting down of search sites that link to these materials, streaming audio and video sites that stream IP that is held under copyright and even require certain Internet Service Providers to block these sites all together.

How does all of this affect you and your business?

It might not right away, but if all of the provisions in this law pass it could have a tremendous impact on your daily use of the Internet for marketing your business.

Let’s say a popular site that you syndicate your listings to is found to have images that are held under a copyright. The Dept. of Justice and/or the copyright holder could file an injunction against that site to have it shut down, effectively ending your ability to reach thousands of potential clients. It wouldn’t matter if you had violated the copyright or not, all that would matter is that your listings were on a site that may have done so.

What if you’ve posted a virtual tour to YouTube. The same thing could happen. The Department of Justice could shut down YouTube and all your hard work would be invisible to potential clients.

Maybe you’ve done a tremendous amount of Search Engine Optimization for your website and you’re ranking really high in the Google search results. Then one day it is found that there is a link from Google to a file sharing site that is facilitating piracy. Google could get shut down.

Maybe these are extreme scenarios, but truth be told, the way the legislation is written today, these types of things can and probably would happen. To familiarize yourself with SOPA and PIPA click here.

What is your take on these pieces of legislation? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Posted in Internet Marketing | Tagged google, Listing Syndication, PIPA, SOPA, YouTube | 18 Comments

#Failing, It’s How To Succeed

By Adam | Published January 17, 2012

There are a long line of REALTORS® that hope to one day sell million dollar homes and make bucket loads of money. In fact, I would guess that most REALTORS® would like to become uber-successful otherwise you wouldn’t have taken the incredible leap to work for yourself and be an entrepreneur.

Let’s face it, whether you own your own company or sell CT real estate under a broker, you are, in essence, a small business owner. Your fortunes rise and all with how hard YOU are willing to work. You have good months and you have bad months and all effect your bottom line.

The miles that you log on the road. The calls that you make. The Facebook status updates that you post. All of these things will determine your own success or failure.

But failure isn’t such a bad thing, it’s how you learn. One of the great mysteries of Internet Marketing is how to identify the right keywords that will help you rank #1 in Google and my goodness, there is a lot of competition for real estate keywords. The only way to truly be successful with using keywords to grow your website traffic organically is to test and fail and test and fail and eventually you’ll find that after some failures you’ll start to have some success.

Tomorrow I will be hosting a free webinar on Internet Marketing where I will discuss Search Engine Optimization and I’ll be looking at how to pick the right keywords for your business so you can have less #Failing and more success. I’d love for you to join me at 10am.

Click here to register for the webinar.

Ultimately though, this post isn’t about failure, it’s about success because out of many failures come even more successes. So while you’re pondering whether you have the hour tomorrow to spend with me talking about how to identify solid keywords to start using in your Internet Marketing, check out what some other great entrepreneurs had to say about success vs. failure.

Follow us on Twitter @CTMLS

Posted in Entrepreneur, Internet Marketing, Marketing | Tagged failure, Internet Marketing, Keyword research, success | 2 Comments

Found A House I Might Like, But Baby It’s Cold Outside

By Adam | Published January 13, 2012

One of my favorite holiday classic songs and a song that I listen to even after the holidays is “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” One of my favorite versions of the song was performed by James Taylor and Natalie Cole and you can watch it below.

Why am I telling you about a holiday song that I really like on January 13th? Well, this weekend, baby it’s going to be COLD outside. If the forecast is to believed we might see temperatures in the single digits. This kind of brutal cold is really making it’s first appearance of the winter here in Connecticut. We’ve actually been pretty lucky that this winter has been fairly generous for those looking for CT homes for sale.

You’re likely not going to have a lot of clients requesting showings this weekend, but that doesn’t mean they have to stop looking for their dream home. Why not send out an e-mail to all of your clients today and encourage them to grab a cup of hot cocoa, cuddle up under a blanket with their laptop and do some searching for CT real estate on CTReal.com.

From the warmth of their own home they can search thousands of listings including rentals and even commercial property.

Since I know your time is limited, I’ve put together a sample e-mail that you could use to send along to your clients before the weekend. Who knows, their search may turn up a property that they want to go take a peak at when things thaw out on Tuesday of next week.

Sample client e-mail:

Dear (CLIENT NAME HERE):

Want to venture out this weekend and do some house hunting in the fresh, bitter, winter air? I didn’t think so. It’s supposed to be in the single digits this weekend, so I have a better idea then bundling up and looking at houses. Grab your warmest blanket, a cup of hot cocoa and your laptop and keep your search going on CTReal.com. When you find something you like, just simply click the e-mail button and send it over to me. We’ll schedule a showing on Tuesday when temperatures are supposed to return to a more manageable 50 degrees. Happy hunting!!

Of course if you have any questions about any of the houses you see, just give me a call at (YOUR PHONE NUMBER HERE) and we can talk them over.

Have a great and WARM weekend.

Sincerely,
(YOUR NAME HERE)

Feel free to change that up a little bit, but you get the general idea. Just because you may not be showing houses this weekend, you can still remain top of mind to your clients and potential clients.

And now I say to you, bundle up and be safe on this bitter cold weekend.

Posted in CTReal.com | Tagged bundle up, CT homes for sale, CT real estate, CTReal.com, weather, winter | Leave a comment

Five Things At CES For The Future Of CT Real Estate

By Adam | Published January 12, 2012

This week the much buzzed about Consumer Electronics Show (CES) takes place in Las Vegas. It has brought out celebrities in droves like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber, really just the Justins. More importantly though, the CES is where major new technologies are introduced and a picture of the future starts to come into clearer focus.

You can read about all of the announcements and new gadgets here, but I want to talk to you about the five things that have been released or talked about at CES that may impact the future of the CT real estate market.

REALTORS® range in the level of adoption of technology from those still using rotary telephones to those who are leveraging every last drop of computing power out of their iPad. Most, are probably somewhere in the middle. There is no doubt though, that like most industries, real estate has been touched and will continue to be touched by the technology bug. So, our attention turns to CES and what tech innovations might affect the future of real estate.

1.) Smart TVs: There have been TVs in the past that have been labeled as Smart TVs, but they have really just been internet connected TVs that let you post to Facebook and Twitter while watching the latest episode of Desperate Housewives. This new generation of Smart TVs being introduced this year incorporates voice recognition and gesture control. This means consumers will now be able to control their TVs with their voice and even their hands from the couch. But the big news for REALTORS® is the size of these TVs, up to 84-inch. So now you basically have an internet connected device on your wall that you can tell to find you CT homes for sale between $300,000 and $400,000 and have them displayed on a GIANT screen. That means that your pictures are even more critical to your marketing efforts. They need to be high resolution and they need to be stunning. You’ve seen photos on the MLS that are thumbnails right? People won’t even be able to SEE those pictures on their new TVs.

2.) Nearly indestructible smart phones: You love your smart phone right? You take it everywhere you go and use it for everything, right? What if you dropped it? Would it survive the fall? Mine didn’t, don’t believe me, here’s photographic evidence. The new generation of smart phones being unveiled at CES is great news for REALTORS® who are always on the go because they are virtually indestructible. This is good news because now you can take your whole world with you in your pocket without the fear of losing it in an instant.

3.) Tablet/Laptop Hybrids: It’s not uncommon to see a handful of REALTORS® carrying their iPads with them wherever they go. These iPads are great and portable, but they present some problems, not the least of which is document storage. Some people have resorted to cloud storage for these documents, but Intel is betting that there are many people out there who enjoy the touch screen of the tablet but would also like the convenience of local storage and a full keyboard. Enter, the tablet/laptop hybrid. It’s a laptop that when closed can still take advantage of it’s external touch screen to perform all sorts of functions. How does this help your business? Fire up the laptop when you need to write a blog post or a long e-mail. Close it up and tweet/share on Facebook on the go. Seems pretty handy.

4.) Water Power: The number of times I have been on the road, away from my car and my cell phone starts to die is too high to count. That’s why I will be first in line for the PowerTrekk Fuel Cell Charger. This device actually uses water to give your cell phone a boost of power. Don’t believe me? Read more about it here. Imagine you’re meeting with a client and showing them some listings using Kurio on your cell phone and all of a sudden your phone dies. Just simply open up the sink and voila, you’ve got juice!!

5.) Augmented Reality: Augmented reality has been around for a couple of years now, but at CES companies have started perfecting it. From the integration of Microsoft’s Kinect with your computer to the virtual dressing room promoted by Body Metrics augmented reality is virtually (no pun intended) everywhere. With this technology you could send a client a link to a home, have Kinect or another device map their living room furniture and they could then use the virtual reality layout of the property to see how their furniture would fit into the rooms. The possibilities are endless.

Some of these things may be far fetched or a long way away, but some of them are happening now and in the next year. These technologies are the latest and greatest and staying on top of what is hot and new will help you to edge out the competition in 2012 and beyond.

How would you put some of these technologies to use? Share in our comments.

Posted in Technology | Tagged Body Metrics, CES 2012, Consumer Electronics Show, CT homes for sale, CT real estate, Intel, Las Vegas, Powertrekk, Samsung | Leave a comment

Stay Competitive With CTMLS Evening Classes

By Adam | Published January 11, 2012

CTMLS is excited to announce the addition of evening classes for some of our most popular webinars. We’ve heard from a lot of our members that our free webinars are great and convenient, but that it would be even more convenient if we offered some of them in the evening. Consider that comment heard. In February we are excited to offer four evening webinars.

I wanted to let you know about them early, because they will fill up fast and we are limiting these sessions to 25 people at a time, so please make sure to sign up today and then put it on your calendar.

The classes we’re offering are below:

Wednesday February 1st, 2012: 7p-8p – MLXchange Your First Steps
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/495474089

Thursday February 2nd, 2012: 7p-8p – Getting to Know MLXchange
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/660008241

Wednesday February 8th, 2012: 7p-8p – Quick and Easy CMA
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/111976129

Thursday February 16th, 2012: 7p-8p – Realist 2: Your Virtual Town Hall Reloaded
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/725892297

If you’ve never taken a webinar with us before, it’s very easy to do. Simply register for the class you want to take with the link above. You’ll then be e-mailed a class link. On the evening the class is offered, 10-minutes before the start time, click on the link that was sent to you in the e-mail and sign-in. The class will begin and you’ll be on your way to mastering these CTMLS services.

Here’s what other people have said about these webinars…

“Thanks for the webinar. I did learn something new (set up auto alerts for a client) and actually used the feature about three hours later. Looking forward to the next one.”

“Thank you for the very very informative webinar class yesterday. I had many questions prior to the class, but you addressed them all and then some! As a new agent, I am grateful for any shared knowledge that will lead to success.

I have worked with a few clients already, and have been using some of the tools available, but now I feel like I can do a CMA with more clarity.

Thank you again for your time. I look forward to more classes! Have a great day!”

“…yesterday’s class was very informative – I have been using MLX since the beginning of time and although I have taken several classes several times you covered things I had no knowledge.”

So what are you waiting for? Get started with one of the evening classes above. If you’d prefer to take a class during business hours, we offer plenty of those too. Just click here and you’ll see a complete list of our upcoming webinars available during the day as well.

Have you taken a webinar in the past? What did you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Posted in Training | Tagged CMA, evening webinars, free classes, MLXchange, Realist 2 | Leave a comment

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