Interview with Deborah Boza-Valledor, COO of Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches. She talks about the growing importance of blogging and its special use in attracting foreign buyers.

RE Bar Camp is turning out to be a BIG event and getting major support from across the board.

So what is it? “RE Bar Camp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.”

What should be really cool about the event is the user generated content aspect helping to bring together the “wisdom of crowds” sparking insightful thinking about the direction of the industry and in particular the future of real estate technology.

Some of the topics that will be covered are:

• Group blogging (Dustin Luther from 4realz)

• Twitter tactics

• Listing Syndication (Mike Price from MLbroadcast, I’m sure he’ll have some cool stuff to say about video)

• Writing for search engines vs. writing for readers (Jay Thompson from Phoenix Real Estate Guy)

There are a bunch of other great topics that are planned. The event is filled with an all-star lineup of participants. The event will take place one day before Inman Connect at 2174 Market Street.

If you are not planning to attend, you should. It will be a blast. Hope to see you there at both Connect and Bar Camp.

I started writing an e-book a few months ago about blogging for real estate, but I never was able to finish it. I have decided to grab the bull by the horns and have at it, but this time with a more laser beamed focus. The e-book/white paper will be more tailored to guiding those professionals who work with Latinos or Spanish speakers. I have found several resources out there that speak to the general market, but nothing that is written for those that serve the growing Latino community. So back to the title of this post, why twitter works…I am a recent participant in the RE.net phenomenon, however, I still consider myself relatively new to the scene. I am not super well connected with real estate bloggers so I recently started following a few well known bloggers on twitter. Tonight I twitted “Working on an ebook, The Complete Guide to Blogging for the Hispanic Real Estate Market. Any bloggers want to drop some knowledge on me?” In a matter of minutes I was put in contact with two different established Hispanic real estate bloggers to contact thanks to Kevin Boer from 3 Oceans Real Estate. I have been tweeting for a few months, but not really on a regular basis. This is an incentive to get more involved and social.

1. Establish yourself as an expert in your local market

Whenever we make a decision as a consumer we prefer to be guided by an expert. Most smart decisions are based on research we do and advice we receive. When buying or selling a home most people would acknowledge that it is a big decision. If I am going to contract a person or company to help me in this process I expect them to be an expert. They need to instill confidence in me and show me that they are competent in their profession, the local market, the process, marketing and everything other part of the transaction. Blogs enable you to share your knowledge about all these things and more. By communicating your experience, knowledge and understanding you instantly build rapport, trust and credibility as a professional, not as a salesperson. A common tendency for real estate professionals starting out is to try and to sell through the blog. If you do this consumers will not continue reading and not come back to your blog. Don’t sell, but rather give quality information. People love to learn so anticipate what they want to know and give it to them. Be consumer-centric!

2. Manage your online reputation

What is your online reputation? If I look for you online, what do I find? Most likely you have already done this or when you meet someone that you want to know more about and you search for them in google. When doing this there are really three different things that can happen:

People have a positive impression of you

People have a negative impression of you

People have no impression of you

Whether you like it or not our lives have become public. Before blogs, facebook, MySpace, linkedIn, YouTube and other online community building tools it was harder to learn about people we met. You would have to ask a co-worker or friend about that individual. Today people are searching online to find out what the Internet says.

This presents a tremendous opportunity for you to manage your reputation and influence what people know about you. By creating a blog you are able to write about topics that you know, share information and ultimately create a reputation as a professional or change your existing reputation.

Here you can read more about managing your online reputation in Spanish

3. Network with other professionals

Good ole’ fashion networking. This has always been a big part of business and real estate in particular. I’ve heard the classic expression, “It’s not about what you know, but who you know”. Well this is only half true because “what” you know is obviously important because it helps you establish yourself as an expert, but the “who” you know still remains extremely important and in this day in age you are able to easily expand your network. Writing blogs is just a slice of the pie. A really successful online networker will read other blogs, make comments on blogs and link to interesting articles. All of these are strategies that help you gain visibility ultimately making professional networking easier. The key is to contribute. You can start off on the sidelines reading and paying attention to what people are posting, but sooner or later you are going to want to jump into the mix. Writing your own blog and engaging other blogs will help you expand your network.

4. Improve your position in the search engines

Search engines like blogs. Why do they like blogs? They like blogs because they provide fresh content. Generally most blogs are optimized for the search engines in their site structure (title tags and H1s) and layout. Unlike your static agent website a blog allows you to add content on a regular basis making it more attractive for search engines. By following the suggestions in point 3 you most likely will generate backward links from relevant blogs to your blog by commenting and interacting with other blogs. Inbound links are one of the most important aspects of gaining position in the search engines.

5. Connect with clients and grow your business

Connecting with new clients and growing your business is the really the goal, isn’t it? This will happen if blogging is done right. Being consistent with quality content, writing about what is important to your clients or potential clients and being social with your blog are all key ingredients. Once you have followed the points mentioned above you will start seeing results. So how do people contact you? First, they start reading your blog and getting to know you. They may make a comment or ask a question. The difference between a blog lead and a website lead is that a blog lead has already pre-qualified you and they are ready to start working with you. Blog-on!

Check out this post in Spanish, Cinco razones por las cuales los agentes de bienes raíces deberían escribir un blog

Listings Syndication is the process of automatically distributing property information on numerous websites across the Internet. As real estate professionals it is your duty to ensure maximum exposure for your client’s listing. When you sit down with your client, one of the first things they will ask you is how you are going to market the property. If your listing presentation is not convincing they could walk. In today’s online marketing climate, Google is still king. But trying to position your site for competitive keywords in the organic results is harder than ever, since large brokerages, national portal sites and hyper-local blogs spend lots of time and money to appear at the top. If you have the budget, time and expertise to position yourself then go for it, but for most professionals your time is better spent focusing on building relationships and managing your clients. Since these national portal sites have huge marketing budgets they are solid options for places to put your listings. Many allow you to syndicate/include your listings for free. In 2007 there were an estimated 33 million visitors to real estate websites in the United States and a huge portion of that traffic went to the top 20 sites many of which allow for syndication. What that means is that your property can be included in some of the most visited sites on the Internet and in most cases you don’t have to pay a dime. Some of these national sites charge for premium placement and if it fits into your marketing budget, it is something that you will want to consider, but the reality is that many of these sites drive free traffic to your website. The more places you are on the Internet the more exposure you are getting.

Here is a quick list of sites that will receive your listings:

Trulia.com

Zillow.com

Craigslist.com

Google Base

VivaReal.us

FrontDoor.com

House.com

CyberHomes.com

Oodle.com

Yahoo Real Estate

There are many more. My recommendation is that if you are not including your listings on these sites, you should. Put yourself in the shoes of the seller. Where will my property be featured? Listing syndication is clearly a competitive advantage.

As you probably have heard everywhere, Hispanics are the fastest-growing group in the U.S. population, the numbers are growing everyday and so is the amount of Internet users who prefer Spanish-language web sites. However most major online real estate portals, neither provide web content in Spanish nor respond to customer inquiries in that language or sadly as it may be, the ones that do it, just prefer to use a plain translation of their existing material instead of writing brand new content specifically thinking of the latino homebuyer.

Mistakingly some practitioners say they don’t see homebuyers begging for Spanish web content and that many of those Hispanics also read English with a fairly good understanding. Of course they do, they go to major real estate portals in English in order to learn more about the real estate processes, but not always because they like it, but just because they have to. It is pretty common to see an entire family trying to figure out what the meaning of a certain term is, because although they do speak English, they are unfamiliar with the technical and financial terms involved in the real estate industry.

So it comes as no surprise that major players in the e-commerce field as Best Buy Co. and 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. have in the last nine months launched Spanish-language sites translating nearly all the content of their English-language sites, providing a testament to the fact that serving customers in Spanish is a remarkable need, and that at the end of the day it will certainly pay off: JupiterResearch LLC. A consulting firm said that Hispanics spent $12.8 billion on the web last year and will spend $21.6 billion by 2011.

Then, the obvious question is, can I have a slice of that pie?, well my answer to that is…Of course you can! Hispanics are out there looking for houses, looking for real estate advice, and all we are doing is sending them to fancy websites that are more focused on the layout than the actual content. Lack of information in Spanish is a tag line that for a lot of people may sound overused, but it is evident how true it is; there is hunger for information in Spanish everywhere in real estate, whenever you go into real estate forums or online discussions, tons of interesting questions come up, and business opportunities arise for those who are willing to share their knowledge. This weekend I found myself in an interesting discussion about Short Sales, the interesting thing was that the discussion was not about the concept itself, but about what the term for short sale in Spanish was. A lot of suggestions arose: venta rápida, venta corta, venta al descubierto and so on. But the core of the discussion turned towards the meaning behind the actual term. I have to say that some of the terms discussed were really misleading or could bring a particular connotation to the term that may cause homeowners make decisions based on information they actually never understood.

Although English dominance rate is high, and taking into account that Spanish dominance may decrease in the next eight years when the Hispanic population is over 50 million, there will still be more than 17 million consumers who still prefer to speak in Spanish according to the Center for Hispanic Marketing of Florida State University.

Just give homebuyers what they need: the right information at the right time, in the language they feel more comfortable speaking and you will certainly see the results.

Para ver la versión en español de esta entrada: ¿Es el lenguaje aún una barrera para llegar a los compradores hispanos?

Who is this guy?

Check out my VivaReal Profile

Today we launched the beta version of our Spanish language blogging platform for real estate. So far the system is behaving as it should be. We have a long list of professionals that are excited about creating their own profile page and blog. Over the next two weeks we will be activating a limited number of beta accounts and by next month we should open up to the public. Currently the site only allows users to post in Spanish, but in the coming months it will be totally bilingual. You can check out my first blog post in Spanish on VivaReal.us here. I am also working on developing a class about blogging for the Hispanic real estate market which will be rolled out at the NAHREP regional conferences in Chicago, Orlando, Anaheim, San Francisco and at the national conference in Phoenix. I also plan on turning the class into a webinar. I would appreciate any ideas for the class. We would also love to hear your feedback on the new site and the blogging platform. It is pretty rudimentary as of now, but we will be rolling out some more advanced functionality soon.

Last week I flew out to Phoenix to my second NAHREP National Board meeting. The meeting was held at the Biltmore Hotel. What a spectacular facility! I believe NAHREP’s decision to host the annual Hispanic marketing convention here in September is a great idea.

It was an action packed two days filled with spirited conversation and enthusiasm about NAHREP’s past, present and future. The NAHREP board of directors is a unique mix of influential real estate practitioners, corporate executives from banks, title companies, insurance and real estate franchises as well as people with experience or a background in politics. There is a lot of passion for the organization and great ideas that will definitely continue to help build NAHREP into the premier Hispanic trade organization in the United States. A lot was covered and I won’t bore with the details, but this year is set to be an outstanding one, filled with regional conferences in Dallas (already took place) Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco, Anaheim and the national conference set for Phoenix. Next month I will be working on creating a class to be taught about Blogging for the Hispanic Real Estate Market which I will also turn into a free webinar. This class will be taught at all regional conferences. I will post more information about the details of the regional events as I get more information. I have also included a short video from our board meeting where Phil Gordon, Phoenix’s Mayor stopped by to say hi and welcome us to his city.

 Here is a video from a presentation that I did along with Tino Diaz at the NAHREP regional convention in Dallas, Texas.

It has been several weeks and I still haven’t written anything about the NAHREP Legislative Conference in Washington DC. It was a great event uniting three multicultural real estate associations, NAHREP (Hispanic), AREAA (Asian) and NAREB (Black/African American). The three organizations laid out a Five Point Plan of Action for Congress:

       1) Protect Homeownership

a. Create a National Foreclosure Prevention Fund to help distressed borrowers with realistic loan modifications and workouts, including the use of soft seconds.

b. Create new CRA requirements and incentives for banks to pursue innovative loss mitigation and foreclosure prevention initiatives.

c. Lenders should not pursue foreclosures until they have fully documented that all reasonable actions were taken to contact the borrower and provide them with a full spectrum of options to workout or modify their loans.

d. CRA examinations must include a review of REO disposition strategies and their potential impacts on low to moderate and Minority neighborhoods.

e. Focus the 5% of GSE pre-tax profits to be used as a loan loss reserve to refinance “difficult to cure” borrowers and renovate REO properties for sale as affordable housing inventory.

       2) Reverse Declining Market Policies

a. Create a single, transparent and consistent industry policy for indentifying and appropriately assessing true risk in “Declining Markets.” This policy should clarify the industry’s practice for assessing higher fees and additional underwriting requirements where market prices are truly in decline. Such policy should ensure that low to moderate and minority communities are not disproportionately affected by the unintended consequences of these policies.

b. Create a “declining markets second mortgage fund” to stimulate market demand and pricing stability for homes in declining markets. The second mortgage should be interest free and payable on a sliding scale as home prices appreciate over the first five years of origination. Buyers should maintain a reasonable amount of equity while honoring their obligation to repay a portion of the second mortgage.

       3) Increase Multicultural Counseling and Outreach

a. Increase funding for post-purchase counseling and require that counseling is made available in multiple languages.

b. Leverage multicultural professional communities to reach out to the borrowers facing foreclosures to increase the likelihood of contacting the borrower.

c. Require that servicers provide loss mitigation options in the language that the borrower is most proficient in.

       4) Restore the Public’s Trust and Confidence

a. Employ stricter regulatory sanctions and professional standards to ensure homebuyers are treated fairly and ensure sustainable homeownership for all minority families.

b. Support federal and state licensure and education standards for all mortgage professionals that strike a fair and reasonable balance of responsibility between all lenders, mortgage professionals and consumers.

c. Create a national directory for all loan originators and mortgage brokers to track individual performance and eliminate predators while rewarding ethical practices.

d. Promote the highest ethical standards and best practices in the real estate and lending industries ensuring fair pricing, responsible underwriting, and complete transparency in all transactions to be provided in the clearest and simplest terms.

       5) Protect the Housing System and Create Liquidity

a. Strengthen regulatory oversight of the GSEs to ensure market and public confidence in these vital housing institutions while expanding their capacity to meet their public mission. It is critical that the GSEs be given the necessary tools to pursue their affordable housing mission and be held accountable to meet the lending needs of minority communities.

b. Make FHA Reform a reality. FHA has been left behind with processes and rules that no longer work well with the private sector. FHA faces challenges in effectively managing its resources and programs in this quickly changing mortgage market. These challenges have already diminished FHA’s ability to serve its public purposes. FHA needs to remain viable for families who have no alternatives for homeownership or affordable rental housing.

c. Subject Wall Street firms to sufficient regulatory oversight. With more Wall Street firms involved in origination and servicing business, there must be adequate oversight related to these firms’ organizations and servicing practices.

d. Provide relevant products and offerings. Increase homeownership opportunities among underserved communities and declining markets. Advocate for flexibility related to product approval and create new tools, such as automated alternative credit products, to more accurately capture the creditworthiness of borrowers who lack traditional credit history.

The content in this post was provided by NAHREP and is original content of their organization.