What an amazing month!

Hi Everyone! I know, I'm doing a terrible job of keeping up with this blog these days. I'm going to try to do a better job but I'm working so much right now, it's tough. Here I am at 1:52am on a Friday night and I finally had a couple of minutes to fill you in on what's going on.

Business has been booming since the first of the year. This month we are close to hitting an all time record for homes under contract in a month and it's a short month. Our record is 46 and right now we are at 41 with the weekend to go. I'm so proud of my Agents and how hard they are working to help all of you, our customers. I am so blessed to have such a great group of Agents and a wonderful support staff. I don't know how we would be able to do all we do without our assistants, marketing coordinator Lindsay, and our office manager, Pat. They are all awesome as I know most of you have already learned!

So we are starting out the year on track to have another great year. This year we have made a decision to bring on more listings. I know I have talked about this in the past, but since January of 2006, we pretty much stopped taking listings here. It really didn't make much sense from a business standpoint. And, after all, I was a businessman way before I got into Real Estate. In January 2006 we had somewhere around 75+ listings. Not one had sold in about 6 months and it was becoming more and more costly to carry these. They were all way over priced and the owners were calling yelling at me and the Agents. I even spent a small fortune over the 6 month period on print advertising which I knew didn't work, but I wanted to show our sellers that it didn't work. I think I wasted close to $50k. Not only did we not sell any of our listings back then, we barely got any phone calls.

Fast forward to a few months ago, the end of 2009, and now we are ready to take on listings again and we have been. We actually started taking them last year and just being very selective by only taking listings that were priced appropriately. After all, when a seller says let's see if we can get this price (way overpriced), why would I take the listing. It costs me a good amount of money to market the property and if it is over priced in this market it will not sell. Even if we were able to get a contract, it would never appraise. Of course most sellers don't think, or most likely don't care, that they are wasting my money. Then again, I don't know that I would have given a second thought prior to becoming a Realtor. I didn't know as I'm assuming most of my potential customers don't either.

I believe right now we have about 50 listings or so. I know we had 12 or 13 this month alone. Over the past several months our listings have been selling and because of our systems, we have been selling 40% of them in house. Why are we having so much luck selling our own listings? Well for one, we have been, since 2006, the number 1 office in buyer transactions out of over 450 companies in Brevard County. So because we have so many buyers, we are able to sell more homes inhouse. It does make for a much cleaner transaction as we know that the Realtors are going to work great together to be sure that our customers are serviced properly.

I thought it might be a good idea to give you a few stats if you are thinking about listing your home and why you might want to list with us. Keep in mind though, we are going to be honest and you might not want to hear what we have to say. We don't take overpriced listings and I won't allow my Agents to do so. We will tell you at what price your home will sell. Plain and simple. Right now selling your home has two ingredients. It's all about price and exposure.

Our exposure is as follows:

Currently we have over 35,000 buyers in our Suntree database and another 19,000+ in our Merritt Island database. That's over 54,000 buyers!

Last month, January 2010, we had over 91,000 visitors to our 4 sites. with over 2,300 new buyers registering on our sites.

Our average listing was clicked on over 300 times per month and that number will most likely increase as our visits to our sites go up.

So as you can see, exposure is our specialty. My background as most of you know is Internet Marketing. We upload all our listings to 20 or so major sites including Google, Yahoo, Homegain, Zillow, Trulia and more! My belief is if we can't sell your home, nobody can!

I think it's time for me to get some sleep. We have our yearly office kickoff party tomorrow night and I have a busy day before hand. Unfortunately I have to go home early after the party and go to bed for a few hours. I have a 6am flight to San Fran to teach a class on Internet marketing to Real Estate Agents and Brokers from all over the country.

As always, if there is anything we can do to help. we are always here for you. Have a great night and a better weekend!

I can't believe it's been so long

First I need to apologize for not writing for so long. I have been non stop since the end of the year and here we are, Feb. 1, 2010 already! So what's been going on you might say. Well it's been an interesting past year in 2009, and I expect another interesting year in 2010.

In 2009, we ended up being the number 1 office in the county out of around 450 offices in buyer transactions. What does that mean? It means that we helped more buyers than anyone else in 2009. It's a great feeling to know we helped so many people move into new homes this year. We ended the year with 311 transactions. Not bad for a small company!

Starting now, in 2010, we have decided to add listings to our office. It's something that we had stayed out of the past 4 years or so as most people were not realistic in the prices they wanted for their homes. It's impossible for us to take on and carry tons of listings just for the sake of having listings. However, I do believe that now, after all this time, the market has leveled and it's time to start taking listings.

Why would someone want to list their home with a company that has spent most of it's time and effort in helping buyers? The answer is simple. What's the most important ingredient in selling your home...the answer of course is buyers. Tropical Realty has more buyers than any other brokerage in Brevard County....in fact I wonder if any one office in the country has more buyers than we do. Currently we have over 34,000 buyers in our Suntree office and another 18,000 buyers in our Merritt Island office. Pretty impressive numbers.

You may be asking though, how many of those buyers are looking in my area? We have a simple program to find out. Just go to www.tropicalrealtybuyers.com and you will be able to put your info in the form. From there we will check our database and get back to you with how many people match your home price and city. For instance, as of yesterday, if you were trying to sell your home in Palm Bay between $100k and $200k we had over 764 buyers from our Suntree database. Are they interested in your home? Of course we can't guarantee that, but we can surely tell you that we will get your home more exposure to buyers than anyone else.

My favorite saying lately is: "Why list with an agent or brokerage who lists homes when you can list your home with an agent or brokerage that actually sells home!" It makes sense doesn't it? If you are looking to sell your home, you need buyers. We might not be able to guarantee we will personally sell your home (although we sell 40% of our own listings) but we can guarantee that you will receive incredible service and most importantly incredible exposure to your home. This past month, Jan. 2010, we had over 90,000 visits to our sites. That's an amazing number of visits with over 65,000 of those visits repeat visitors. We must be doing something right if all these people come back to our sites on a regular basis.

With all the buyers in our database and an additional 50-100+ new consumers registering on our sites every day of the week, there is a good chance we have a buyer sitting there waiting for your home to come on the market. To discuss marketing your home, please feel free to call us.

BTW, is your home listed with another agent out of Brevard County? If so, we are always willing to help your Agent market your home by adding them to our site as well as uploading them to the other 22 sites we work with. Obviously the sooner you sell your home, the sooner you will use us to help you buy your new home. If this is you, feel free to contact me and I'll let you know what your Agent must do to take advantage of this program.

As always, if there is anything I can do to help you, please don't hesitate to ask. We are always here to help.

Have a great night and I promise not to take so long between posts.