AMID the jobless recovery, some landlords are showering flat-screen TVs, cash, rent-cuts and other incentives on tenants to encourage them to renew their apartment leases and thus avoid the expense of filling empty units.

The rise in unemployment has prompted tenants to seek roommates, move home or trade down to cheaper units. In the third quarter, the national apartment-vacancy rate hit 7.8 per cent, a 23-year high, according to Reis Inc, which tracks vacancies and rents in the top 79 markets.

“Many companies are doing whatever they can to keep units occupied, especially heading into the seasonally slower leasing period,” said Paula Poskon, an analyst with Robert W Baird & Co.

The trends are taking a toll on the bottom line. Apartment Investment & Management Co, which owns and operates roughly 150,000 units nationwide, reported last Friday that its funds from operations, a key REIT metric, fell to US19 cents a share from US60c a year earlier. UDR Inc, which has about 45,000 units on the West Coast and in Washington, DC, reported earlier this month that its funds from operations dropped 42 per cent to US19c.

“We do need job growth in order for our business to prosper,” said David Neithercut, chief executive of Equity Residential, the country’s largest apartment REIT by market capitalisation. “I think 2010 will be another year of doing the best we can.”

Some of the large REITs were able to keep their occupancies up. UDR managed to increase occupancy to 95.6 per cent from 95 per cent a year earlier. Colonial Properties Trust, which operates 35,000 Sunbelt apartments, said its third-quarter occupancy fell to 94.4 per cent from 96 per cent a year earlier.

But landlords attracted and retained tenants by offering incentives and rent cuts. Equity Residential said new tenants in the third quarter paid 9-10 per cent less rent than the previous residents. AvalonBay Communities Inc, an upscale operator, said its decline was about the same.

Owners are focusing on keeping existing tenants because when apartments become vacated they can sit empty for months and often require marketing, painting, brokerage commissions and other expenses to attract new tenants. Denver-based UDR is offering renewing tenants a flat-screen TV, new carpet, kitchen upgrade or, $US300 in cash. The money is the most popular choice, said chief executive Thomas Toomey.

Mr Neithercut said Equity Residential doesn’t initially offer rent-cuts to existing tenants to persuade them to renew. But if the tenant plays hardball, the company asks: “What can we do to keep you?” he said.

One problem for landlords is that existing tenants can easily check the worldwide web to see what deals new tenants are being offered. And new tenants are getting incentives like a waived pet deposit or two months free of rent.

Some landlords have also become more open-minded about tenants with credit issues involving home foreclosures. In the past, a foreclosure on a credit record could have meant an automatic denial. Now such blemishes are so commonplace that the stigma is easing. Equity Residential looks for reasonable credit history “outside of a problem that they’ve had with a single-family home”, Mr Neithercut said.

Another sign of the times: In New York City, landlords are paying broker fees. Typically in New York, which has traditionally been a tight rental market, tenants have to pay fees as high as 15 per cent of a year’s rent. But so far this year, Equity Residential has paid about $1.5 million in such commissions.

Apartment landlords say that one benefit of the bad market is that it has practically halted new construction. New completions are expected to be 98,000 next year and 109,000 in 2011, compared with 188,000 last year and 204,000 this year, according to Green Street Advisors.

But when loss rates are taken into account – the removal of units because of obsolescence – the actual addition will be immaterial. That means that when the economy rebounds, the supply will be tight, increasing landlord profits.

“I have utmost confidence in our ability to be successful when we get to there,” said Mr Neithercut. “I just don’t know how far away ‘there’ is.”

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

Whenever you write an article, it’s extremely important to make sure that you insert an interesting image that relates to your content. The main reason why it’s important is that you only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention on the web before they decide whether to mouse click away or not.

A good quality image catches a person’s eye & increases the chances that your article will get read. Rather than running around taking photos or paying professional photographers & models to appear in your photos, there are a number of sites where you can download top quality images inexpensively.

Plus, now there’s an easier way to find the image you want.

Searching for these royalty free stock images has just been made even easier by a stock photo search engine called Cyclo.ps.

“Tired of the cumbersome searches through stock photo sites? See better results with Cyclo.ps. Our monster machine brings the results of the most popular stock sites to one location. Search once. See it all. At Cyclo.ps. “

Cyclo.ps searches through sites like Flickr, Shutterstock, BigStockPhoto, Fotolia, stock.xchng, Cutcaster, Photos.com & stockvault.

Another site I use for royalty free photos is iStockPhoto.

PhotoBucket & Google Images also provide a huge resource for images.

Inserting images into your articles doesn’t just catch a person’s eye when they visit your website.

There’s also another important reason why I always insert an images into my articles:- Facebook sharing.

Whenever I share one of my articles with my friends or fans on facebook I make sure there is a thumbnail of the image within the article appearing within the News Feed or Live Feed.

Having a good quality image appearing within the Facebook feed increases the likelihood that my Facebook friends & fans will click open the article.

Additionally, if they like the article enough then they may even share it with their Facebook friends.

And if they share the article with the image appearing then it increases the chance of having their friends come over & visit the website too.

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

 

Those property managers who, like me, have been around for a number of years would know that the perception of property management as a job choice has changed for the better.  And that’s a great thing!

The days are long gone when rental properties were somehow looked after by the ‘girl’ behind the front counter and the management of properties was considered something an agency had to do because they had sold a client an investment property. In some cases, property management was seen as the training ground for those wanting to enter the sales side of real estate.

It would be no exaggeration to say that managing property in most agencies was limited to finding a tenant, providing a lease agreement and receipting rent.  Not a lot of significance was given to any of these tasks being completed in an effective, professional manner.  It was just something that needed to be attended to and it didn’t matter who did it. Many vital areas were ignored by the majority of agencies.  

 

There was simply no consideration given to the reporting side of property management, inspections, systems, policies and procedures, duty of care, maintaining appropriate files, and the list could go on.

Again speaking generally, most people engaged in the management of property were not there for the long haul.  The common ideology seemed to be that it was what you did until something better came up or the stress under which you were working became too much to cope with. 

Meet the ‘new’ property manager

Times have changed and definitely for the benefit of all parties involved. Not only has the property management industry become extremely professional and highly systemised, it has also become very specialised.  Well trained, experienced property managers have become a sought after commodity and they play a critical role in the modern agency’s team. 

There is now a career path in property management and a number of areas of specialisation.

Firstly there are the mainstream types of management: 

• Residential property

• Commercial property

• Holiday rentals

• Strata management

Within these mainstream types there are now a number of less traditional areas of management, which require the skills of experienced and informed property managers. 

Let’s look at the most easily recognised management area – residential property management.  Historically this has meant managing a residential property for an investor owner and that property could be a freehold house, a high rise unit or a townhouse. 

Now managing residential property can mean a number of other things; 

• Managing blocks of student accommodation 

• Retirement villages

• Apartment blocks

• Defence housing

• Government housing

• Mining towns

Specific systems and skills are required for each of these new property management areas and subsequently a whole new world of opportunity has opened up for property managers.  

 

Opportunity knocks in mining towns

Until recently mining companies were responsible for management of the property they supplied to their employees. This meant the management process was handled by administration staff normally not trained in the area of property management.  Sometimes tenants were placed in property without tenancy agreements, bonds or condition reports.  In some mining towns when an employee left the company, which meant they left the property, it was quite common for kitchens to be replaced, the property could be painted inside and out or in extreme cases the property could be totally refurbished. 

Obviously this created a number of issues for the mining companies, who didn’t have the bandwidth or skill set necessary for their team to manage the associated problems.  It also added enormously to the cost of providing rental accommodation to their employees. 

 

 

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

Technorati Tags: Property Management, property manager

Agents: Spreading Your Message Online Doesn’t Get Much Easier Than This.

by Greg Vincent, on 23rd October, 2009 • No Comments

Hello there! Thanks for visiting GenYre.com, we hope you find this website useful. You might also want to subscribe to our Comments RSS or News RSS Feeds. You can also receive regular GenYreTweet updates via Twitter or contact the owners of GenYre with scoop on a news story or just to ask a question. In any case, enjoy your stay, comment away and make sure you come back soon.

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Are You Using One Of The Most Powerful Tools On The Internet – Twitter? If you’re not, then I hate to tell you but you’re missing out on something that can have a massive impact on your online success & help to spread your marketing message out all over the web at the same time.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomena on the internet & it’s not just for the celebrities & politicians.

Lots of companies are now achieving great results by incorporating Twitter into both their marketing & their day-to-day online communications.

With people now spending more & more of their time on Social Media, it’s important that real estate agents & property managers start to become part of the online conversation.

What is Twitter & Why Is It So Good For Real Estate Agents?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows messages (tweets) of 140 characters or less to be posted up onto the web in real time.

It provides the convenience of text messaging but with the additional advantage that the messages are posted up onto the web for others to see, plus it’s without the costs involved with SMS, because Twitter is free to use.

How Can Agents Leverage Their Marketing By Using Twitter?

Did you know that one single message posted onto Twitter can also be automatically sent out across to numerous other Social Media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Plaxo, MySpace, Blogger, WordPress, etc… all from just one single tweet.

Also, if other people on Twitter like your message then they will often share your tweet with their followers as well, and your friends on Facebook could share the message with their friends on Facebook too, etc, etc.

Which means that one tweet can not only be leveraged out across a number of your own Social Media accounts but they can also end up being shared amongst the Social Networks of your friends & followers to help you get your message out across the web.

For instance, there have been lots of times where I’ve posted a message onto Twitter which other people on Twitter have found interesting & subsequently they’ve shared the message with their followers by Retweeting my message.

And likewise there’s  lots of times where I Retweet other people’s messages that I think my followers may be interested in.

Here’s an example of how a retweeted message looks.

RT @GregVincent: Suncorp says Thank You Mr Hooker as they sell LJ Hooker to LJ Hooker ~ http://ow.ly/qQ6d

Sometimes, the people who retweet your message have only a handful of followers & others have thousands of followers who can potentially see your message.

And, this is only a small part of how Twitter can spread your message.

Here’s a snapshot of how Twitter works for me & how it could work for you.

As well as writing articles & posting them onto sites like GenYre = energy, each week I write the Real Estate Agent Newsletter for the Real Estate Agent Success Club & send it out to agents via email.

Prior to using Social Media, email was the only way that I could share my newsletters out across the web.

But now I can also share each of the Real Estate Agent Newsletters with my followers & friends across all of my Social Networks via a single tweet.

For example, here’s what I do each week.

Once I’ve completed my newsletter I email it out to my database. Then I simply post a tweet with a link to the Real Estate Agent Newsletter up onto Twitter for my Twitter followers to read. And then within seconds, that same tweet automatically appears as an update on my Facebook profile, Facebook Fan Pages, plus it also appears on my other profiles like LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Plaxo, etc.

On top of that, I also have a Twitter feed appearing on my websites which means that if someone is visiting my site then they can also read my tweets & potentially read the newsletter too.

Should Agents Have More Than One Twitter Account?

You may have noticed that the Twitter feed for this site appears on the right hand side about half way down the site & features updates from Twitter.com/GenYRealEstate & not my personal Twitter account.

Twitter also allows you to have multiple accounts & I’ve created a separate Twitter account specifically for this site.

The reason I’ve done this is because the GenYre site has been set up for multiple contributors & the contributors will also have access to update the GenYRealEstate Twitter account which enables them to share tweets that they feel may be helpful to the Genyre = energy readers & followers.

(Real Estate Agents could easily do a similar thing by having a personal twitter account for each staff member  & a company twitter account that each of their staff could tweet interesting real estate related content to.)

Since the Real Estate Agent Newsletter provides helpful tips for real estate agents which is good information for GenYre = energy readers & followers, I also send out a Tweet linked to each week’s newsletter via the Twitter.com/GenYRealEstate account simultaneously.

If you think this sounds a bit hard to do or really time consuming, check this out…

Now that I have this set up, all I have to do is write an article, email it to my database & tweet a link to the newsletter and within seconds I have shared my newsletter out to thousands & thousands of people amongst lots of different networks over the internet.

When I think back to what I had to do years ago to get thousands of people to read one of my articles & the expense involved, I have to say that spreading a message doesn’t get much easier or any cheaper than this.

Plus, there’s also an extra added bonus.

Because my articles now sit up on the web forever, people also come across them via Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon & Delicious, etc.  People will often quote from my articles & link across to them from their own articles too.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can create a similar marketing strategy within your agency and how it all works, you may want to come along and catch up at one of the Social Media for Real Estate Seminars.

Here’s something else that works really well…

Before I go, there’s one more thing that I do with Twitter that I’ve found works really well & could work well for real estate agents too.

In a previous post I shared a YouTube video I did about The Password To Help You Achieve Your Goals & whilst it’s really easy to create & upload a video onto YouTube, the hardest part is getting a large number of people to watch it.

So, what I do is, anytime someone follows me on Twitter they automatically receive an email from me saying,

” Thanks for following me. Here’s a quick video tip I made that may help you to achieve your goals http://tr.im/lQg1 “

I set this automated email response up from my Twitter account about 4 – 5 months ago & before doing this I’d only had about 20 people who’d watched the video in the previous 2 months. Now the videos had over 650 views & I haven’t touched it since setting this automated response up.

So much of my marketing happens automatically for me now.

Note:  http://Tr.im is a URL shortening service that makes it easier to link to a website within the 140 characters available on Twitter & the links are trackable.

As of today I’ve had 339 people click open the link directly from the automated emails sent to my new followers. I don’t know where the rest of the other 300 views have come from. They could be from the previous blog post or from people simply watching videos directly on YouTube.  I’ve done the video once & the rest just happens.

Share and Enjoy:

Follow Me on Twitter:

Tags: Bing, Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Friendfeed, Google, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, Social Media, StumbleUpon, Tr.im, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, YouTube

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Next entry: Real Estate Agents: Are You Going To Finish Strong In 2009?
Previous entry: 26 Ways To Build Subscribers To Your Newsletter Or Blog

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

It’s about this time of year that I always made sure I finished strong by focusing on the one deadline that can be extremely important to property sellers & that deadline is Christmas.

Over the years, I’ve found that there are some sellers who definitely want to have their property sold & moved prior to Christmas so they can celebrate Christmas in their new home.

If you need confirmation that Christmas is an important deadline to home sellers, just ask the new home Builders & Conveyancers who frantically work like crazy in the last few weeks leading up to Christmas to either get the home built or get the transaction settled.

I also know first hand that Christmas is an important deadline for home sellers, because I remember as a young child the builders let us move into our brand new home on Christmas Eve. Our whole family was really excited.

We’d been watching for months as our new home was being built & we were all so keen to spend Christmas in our new home that we ended up sleeping on mattresses on the floor waiting for Santa. All the while, hoping & praying that Santa knew that we had moved.

Then, there are other sellers who just want to have the peace of mind of knowing that they have the sold sticker on their property prior to Christmas & don’t have to worry about keeping the place tidy just in case a buyer turns up.

These sellers can start packing & getting ready for their move over the holidays & be comfortably settled into their new home just in time for the first term of school to start.

Moving prior to the start of the first term of school can be extremely important to some sellers, especially if their children are moving to a new school.

And, then there are other sellers who don’t really care & will be happy to sell when they get their price sometime in 2010 (or in some cases 2011).

So, all you need to do now to finish the year off strong is identify who amongst your existing home sellers wants to be sold by Christmas & set a plan to help them achieve this goal before this very important deadline.

Also, if you want some inspiration about finishing strong in 2009, here’s one of the most inspirational videos I’ve ever seen.

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

Global financial crisis forces home sales

THE global financial crisis has forced more than one in four of NSW’s homeowners to sell, a study released today reveals.

Posted via email from jasonrose’s posterous

Google has just released 2 new products that will have an impact on real estate agents.

1. Google Sidewiki

In a previous post, Real Estate Agents Your Customers Are Checking You Out Online, I mentioned how customer reviews could have an impact on real estate agencies & could affect which real estate agent a customer may decide to employ.

In that post, I was concerned about customer reviews appearing right beside a Google Search for real estate agents.

But now with Google’s Sidewiki, customer reviews can now appear right next to your company website?

In an announcement from the Official Google Blog: Sidewiki “allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.

In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you’ll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries.”

Michael Arrington of TechChrunch explains that “Other users can read and vote comments up or down. All those votes will create a user ranking for each individual that will determine where their comments fall on the Sidewiki. The higher the ranking, the higher comments appear. The goal, Google says, is to help move better content up and move spammy stuff to the bottom where it won’t be seen. Website owners who have claimed their sites always have the right to the first comment on any URL they control.”

At this point the comments or customer reviews are only visible to other users of Google Sidewiki. Users can post a comment, but can’t edit the comments of others.

Almost every real estate company relies on their reputation & their ability to promote their websites & their listings via a one way conversation across the web, but now Google’s Sidewiki allows public commenting on your site & your listings whether you like it or not.

The scary part about Google Sidewiki is that most agents won’t even know that they have to download the Google Sidewiki to see the comments being made on their own website.

You can find the Google Sidewiki download link here.

2. Google’s Place Pages

Google has announced another new product :- Place Pages on Google Maps

Google are adding information on businesses, restaurants, points of interest, neighbourhoods, and yes that’s right, customer reviews on separate web pages within Google Maps.

Google said “We want there to be a Place Page for every place in the world, but we might be missing a few places here and there. If you’re a business owner, you can add or update your business details through the Local Business Centre. This allows you to make sure your Place Page reflects the most accurate, authoritative and recent information about your business. And if you don’t have a business, but you discover a place that doesn’t have a Place Page, you can add it through community edits or Google Map Maker, depending on the country you’re in.”

Agents should go into the Local Business Centre and check to see what information currently appears about your business on Google & Google Maps.

If your real estate agency doesn’t appear within Google’s Local Business Centre, make sure you create a business listing so customers can find your agency on Google.

You can add up to 5 different categories eg. Real Estate Agents, Real Estate Agency, Real Estate Consultant, Property Management Company, etc. to help people find you on Google.

You can also customise how your business is listed on both Google & Google Maps.

As Ben Parr from Mashable mentions, “Place Pages have their own separate, potentially indexable web pages. Unlike before, this information could appear as their own search results. With Google Maps already at the top of most location-based searches.”

It’s important to understand that reviews simply won’t be going away, so it’s best to embrace them & use the Free tools like Google’s Local Business Centre to help people find you easier.

Major concern for real estate agents & sellers.

With Google saying that they want to create a “Place Page for every place in the world”, it’s highly likely that your listings will end up appearing with their own Place Page as well.

This will mean that reviews will eventually end up sitting on the Place Page for one of your listings and/or the reviews could appear next to your listings in Google’s Sidewiki.

Imagine if a buyer criticised the property, or deliberately posted negative comments in an attempt to deter other buyers from buying the property.

Or what if they mentioned that they’d put in an offer that was rejected prior to auction & the pricing scared a potential buyer away? It would become an issue for both sellers & agents.

What can an agency do to protect their reputation?

Managing your online reputation is going to be an ongoing process & in an upcoming post I’ll be sharing a number of ways that real estate agents can manage their online reputation effectively.

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

Last week Realmark was announced as the winner of two major awards at this year’s REIWA Awards for Excellence. Voted Residential Estate Agency of the Year and taking out the Communications Award for the third time.

We are incredibly honoured to be recognised by our peers in this way. There is no doubt that these two awards belong to the people of Realmark, who work so hard everyday to ensure we are the best at what we do.

Next stop is the national REIA awards in Adelaide early next year, fingers crossed for a national win!

Great results John, Good luck in Adelaide next year.

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

Posted via web from jasonrose’s posterous

“Pricing” your Home Unwise in Current Market

Sellers putting their homes on the Australian and New Zealand market with a price tag are not doing themselves any favours in the current global economy, according to the Managing Director of Harcourts International, Mike Green.

Posted via email from jasonrose’s posterous