A Mini House Can Bring Home Owners Max Rewards The tiny house (also called tiny home, mini house, or small house) movement is all about downsizing your lifestyle so you can live a more fulfilling life without accumulating large debts or a huge mortgage hanging eternally over your head. We are now seeing full blown tiny…
What is the deal with statewide MLSs? Statewide MLS Do statewide MLS’s exist? How can you search all of the available listed properties in a particular state? How many MLSs are there in the US? With the internet becoming the cornerstone of accessing listing data, why are there not more statewide MLSs? Wouldn’t having…
We address questions and concerns about for real-estate guest blogging. What is real-estate guest blogging (or posting)? Will it increase my real-estate website rank on Google? Is it a safe, “white-hat” SEO tactic? What is the process for real-estate guest posting? What changed in Google’s algorithm? We also cover what you should avoid when guest…
Zillow Announces They Are Buying Homes Yes, you heard that right…Zillow will now be buying and selling homes. Similar to the process currently in place with online home purchasing sites like Offerpad, Zillow will no longer be only selling advertisements on real estate listings…THEY WILL BE THE BUYER AND SELLER OF HOMES. Zillow will roll…
The Best Bargain in Real Estate Lead Generation Looks to be Drying Up… What is it and why is it dying? Real Estate Lead Generation For years now, we have been working on providing holistic real estate lead generation. Although we primarily provide SEO for REALTORS, our overall goal is to provide a…
Local SEO For Real Estate We have been implementing SEO for real estate for almost 17 years now. Although we have our own internal processes for ranking real estate websites, Google is constantly changing. In the past, a part of our overall process for ranking a real real estate website on Google has been implementing…
DEAN Knows has partnered with IDX Broker To Waive Your IDX Setup Fee DEAN Knows has been working with RETS feeds and implementing IDX and VOW to real estate websites for years. Now, we have partnered with the best IDX Partner in the business, IDX Broker. This new partnership allows us to implement IDX on…
DEAN SAYS . . . ____________________________________________________ At the end of the day, acquiring real-estate leads is not the challenge. That can be done in a variety of ways. What sets the bar for success in the long sales cycle of real-estate is the ability to convert those leads to sales, and a CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGER (CRM)…
Real Estate Websites for Agents – What You Need To Know I am asked all the time by agents….Do I need a website? Of course you need a website….What TYPE of real estate website is what we should be talking about. What you want your website to do and what you anticipate getting out of…
Real Estate Websites – The Problems and the Fix DEAN Knows has been involved in Real Estate Websites since before many people were online at all. We were involved in putting Real Estate Listings online before IDX was even defined. We even have written about the history of real estate listings online. We wanted…
Real Estate Websites and SEO There are many Real Estate Website Companies and the vast majority of them claim to include SEO. The claim is usually that the site will be SEO Optimized or Search Engine Friendly. That makes perfect sense, since it doesn’t do you any good to have a great real estate website,…
In the Beginning It wasn’t all that long ago that Real Estate Listings weren’t available online—at least not as abundantly as they are today. In the beginning, large, forward-thinking brokers invested tons of money in websites and technology and figured out how to put their own real-estate listings online. If anyone happened to be connected…
Real Estate Marketing Basics–Touching Your Sphere As real estate agents, we all know how important it is to stay visible to our sphere of influence. In the old days, that meant being active in the community, attending dinner parties and other social events. While being “social” we made sure to wear our name tags and…
Absorption Rate Real Estate The use of absorption rate in real estate is critical to understanding supply and demand. How quickly new properties are listed and the time it takes for them to sell can provide a plethora of insight into a particular real estate market. How to use Absorption Rate to Choose a Farm…
Tired of Spending Your Money With Zillow? There Are Other Marketing Options! Are you a real estate agent or broker that advertises with Zillow? If you are, even if you are receiving an ROI, you advertising dollars could be better spent. Zillow is by far the most visited real estate website in the world. As…
Could this Be the End of IDX? For some time now, The Realty Alliance has been working on a project called Project Upstream. There has been much speculation on what Project Upstream is and what it will do. We are now starting to see all the pieces fall into place with some recent changes in…
DEAN Knows brings all of the pieces of Digital Online Marketing together in a powerful synergy. Creating Online Marketing Systems with a holistic approach, customized for your business. SEO – Search Engine Optimization DEAN Knows is a New Orleans SEO Company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization – SEO – in…
The WRONG Way to Use Digital Marketing for Real Estate I see a ton of real-estate technology offerings that claim to offer some sort of benefit by using your listing data and putting it on their domain—then they circulate your information with the hopes of lead generation for themselves. This practice has been going on…
The Louisiana Real Estate Commission in its 2014 session has made some slight, but important changes to how Real Estate Teams can be advertised. Starting January 2, 2015 (because Jan 1 is a holiday) LREC will start enforcing their new restrictions on Real Estate Team names. The new changes limit a real estate team to…
Zillow & Listhub Break Up—Ray Charles Could Have Seen That Coming! Well, its official, Zillow and Listhub have broken up. After their 4 year affair, they are parting ways. For those of you that are not familiar, Listhub feeds Zillow listings—“a few hundred thousand” at the moment. Looks like Zillow will be creating their own dashboard for…
What to Expect in the Real Estate Industry for 2015 2015 will bring a world of changes into the real estate industry. The remnants, and potentially the most detrimental part, of the Dodd-Frank Act go into effect on Real Estate Title Companies and Mortgage Lenders. The new changes, called TILA-RESPA go into effect on August 1st.…
Professional Real Estate Photography Back in another lifetime, when I worked for a very large, independent real estate broker, I was tasked with improving the Sales Rate of our listings while adding to the broker’s value proposition to their agents and clients. After brainstorming and looking at trends, and up and coming technologies, I found…
ONE-ON-ONE PERSONALIZED MATRIX TRAINING MLXchange and Fusion are Going Away! As most of you are aware, both MLXchange and Fusion are going away and will no longer be accessible after February 25th. Some people are not comfortable with the new system. Because of that, DEAN Knows is offering personalized one-on-one training on the new Matrix…
Trulia is rolling out a new CRM (Client Relationship Manager) that is being offered directly to Real Estate Agents. Trulia One claims to bring all of your leads, including leads from other web portal competitors such as REALTOR.com, into one place. The CRM is touted to let you organize and instantly respond to your leads…
For many years I have been attending the NAR Mid-Year and Annual Conventions with one of the highlights of each conference being the MLS Committee meeting. This is where the real changes that truly affect how our business runs are made. For years, these meetings have been held with great discourse and have lasted hours debating…
SOLD DATA in IDX Feeds It’s official. IDX feeds all over the country will now include the Sold Status. In a follow up to my post 2014 NAR Convention MLS Policy Changes— Sold Properties in IDX Feeds, we are happy to say that in the Greater New Orleans area– our MLS is slated to roll…
The largest MLS in the state of Louisiana, GSREIN (the Gulf South Real Estate Information Network) is prepping to roll out an entirely new MLS system for their real estate agents. The new MLS system will be available to all real estate agents that participate in GSREIN in the first quarter of 2015. The new system…
RESO — The Real Estate Standards Organization has been working for years on creating some standardization for how MLS refer to certain fields. For instance, where one MLS may say “Bathrooms Half” and some may say “Half Baths”. The lack of consistency has forced vendors that display IDX to Map each data feed for each…
Real Estate Marketing is ever changing. With technology becoming so front and center you can no longer rely on print advertising in the newspaper or Just Listed – Just Sold postcards to get the job done. So…where should you spend your real estate advertising budget in 2015? What is the golden ticket? Facebook Ads for…
REDFIN REAL ESTATE COMES TO NEW ORLEANS It looks as if Redfin will be entering the New Orleans real-estate market. So, why does anyone care? New Orleans is the second most flown into city in the United States and has a huge tourism economy. People come from all over to go to the famous French…
Who Dominates New Orleans Real Estate SEO? Search Engine Optimization — SEO for short — is the work behind getting your website to organically rank (not paid ads) for specific search terms. The sites that land on page 1 of Google for searches like New Orleans Real Estate or Homes For Sale In New…
The Difference Between IDX and VOW Having real estate listings online has been a cornerstone for any modern real estate website for the last 5-10 years. And needless to say, a website should be a major part of any agent’s marketing plan. Although many real estate agents are familiar with IDX, many REALTORS may not…
Touching Your Sphere of Influence – Real Estate Marketing Basics As real estate agents, we all know how important it is to stay visible to our sphere of influence. In the old days, that meant being active in the community, attending dinner parties and other social events. While being “social” we made sure to wear…
Touching Your Sphere – Real Estate Marketing Basics Continued… Social Media With so many people spending so much time on social media, it is a perfect avenue to remind your sphere that you are in real estate. Its important to remember, you can’t make every single post on social media about selling yourself. Look at…
NAR’s PLAN: KILL OFF THE LITTLE GUY? A few years ago, there were 2 MLS’s competing for membership. The large brokers in both markets only wanted one MLS and asked the two MLS’s to merge. The smaller MLS refused, as they needed the MLS revenue to finance their Association. So, the largest brokers, that had…
Project Upstream – The Update If you have not read our first article on Upstream – we strongly recommend that you do that prior to reading this. In our initial post on the RPR – AMP – Realty Alliance project called Project Upstream we spoke about the possibly that IDX could be looking at…
Using Custom Cartoons in your Real Esate Marketing Saying it with a smile. Making the message memorable. Studies show that adding a touch of humor to even the driest material can aid in lesson retention, in morale boosting and team building. Using cartoon is a great way to customize your other real estate marketing…
Zillow Buys Dot Loop Whats That Mean For Real Estate Technology? Well, it looks like Zillow is continuing to make movements to take over the real estate world. Today, Zillow announced that it is purchasing Dot Loop and the deal is scheduled to close in the 3rd quarter of this year. Most people are…
Slidell Real Estate Charts and Graphs Anyone who knows me, knows that I can be fanatical about statistics. As someone who lives and works in Slidell, I thought it would be nice to give the general community some Real Estate Statistics on the Slidell Real Estate Market. So, being the nice guy that I am,…
