Heath's Blog

Wow! Finally an article talking about real estate in a positive way! Opportunity abounds for some people.

An article in the Boston Globe talks about keeping the real estate opportunities on Cape Cod quiet. The author is trying to find a house to buy and she doesn't want to compete with others going over the bridge. It is a long time coming, but the tide of reporting may be changing!

I have been making offers for buyers for months now. Other agents report they are showing more homes and getting more under agreement. There are some slow price ranges, but there are many ranges that are very active.

While foreclosure activity isn't over yet, there are many who aren't affected negatively and are in a position to buy. Just like the stock market, when things are down it is a good time to seriously look at buying - and there are many "buyable" properties on Cape Cod!

One of the most technical web techs from Zi llow was drafted into the military.
While at boot camp he went to the rifle range where he was given some instructions, handed a rifle, and a couple rounds of ammo.
He loaded the rifle and fired several shots at the target.

The report of his in-accuracy came from the target area. All of his attempts had completely missed the target.
The tech looked at his rifle, and then at the target.
He looked at the rifle again, and then once more at the target.
He placed his finger over the end of the rifle barrel and squeezed the trigger with his other hand.
The end of his finger was blown off -- whereupon he yelled toward the target area...
"It's leaving here just fine; the trouble must be at your end!"

This is how the aggregators are treating listing agents and brokers.
We listing agents and brokers are what is not operating correctly, certainly it can't be the aggregators.

Well, maybe we shouldn't be giving them their guns and ammo.

5 Monkeys - Why Real Estate Agents Are Willing To Give Their Listings Away."

Here is an explanation of the why agents aren't more concerned with giving their listings away:

Five monkeys were put in an enclosure with a ladder.
Every time a monkey went up the ladder, scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water.
After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder.
After some time, no monkey dared to go up the ladder, regardless of the temptation.
The scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys.

The 1st thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder. Immediately the other four monkeys beat it up.
After several beatings, the newest member learned not to climb the ladder even though it never knew why.
A 2nd monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The 1st monkey participated in the beating for the 2nd monkey.
A 3rd monkey was changed and the same was repeated (beating).
The 4th was substituted and the beating was repeated, and finally the 5th monkey was replaced with the same results.

What was left was a group of 5 monkeys, that even though they never received a cold shower, continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder.

If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder…
I bet you the answer would be… “I don’t know – that’s how things are done around here.”

In the real estate industry, Zillo w, Real, tor.com, Tru lia, Home .com, and many other big money sites with lots of programmers, and even many MLS managers, "are the scientists." Because there is a high turn over of licensees in the real estate industry, many Agents have been "replaced."
The "beatings" are the blogs, and the "news", and the "trend reporting" from the "scientists" professing and endorsing the giving away of listings to aggregators or a national MLS.
Agents continue to give away their future, because "that’s how things are done around here.”

Agents don't need large sites that agregate information.
Agents need to get their owns sites found more easily - and preferably free.

REindex.com, The Site Engine^sm lets the monkeys climb the ladder again.

For listers, by a lister, for free.

REindex.com, The Site Engine(sm) has been approved as my Trademark/Servicemark for my website!  I have been quietly building this web portal for 8 years to help any listing agent get found by directly linking to their site whether they request it or not.  I even paid 5 teenagers last summer to review real estate pages for me so we could link to more sites more quickly.

I am a listing agent and became frustrated with all the sites that compete for search engine results with me and the other listing agents in my town.  Most of the sites that the search engines show are lead generators or advertisers that keep customers from easily finding me and my listings.

My "Site Engine" concept is based on the idea that a search in any search engine for "Your Town, State real estate" will return thousands of useless links to lead generators or advertisers.  My "Site Engine" makes it easy to find any town in the US, and we only link to the agent pages that have listings in that town!

I actually surf each site before we link to it so we can make sure they actually list property in the town we link to them from.  Because people can trust that we have already surfed the sites we link to, they trust us.  That trust is passed on to the agent as consumers move from our site to theirs.

We link to any listing agent site regardless of their SEO, ranking, or keywords.  We only require that they make their personal listings easy to find and separated from other MLS listings.  (Otherwise we'd have to link to all the lead generation sites, too.)

I have spoken to agents with 50 domain names as they try to get the search engines to find them.  Other agents are trying to learn the optimization techniques for all the different search engines.  REindex.com, The Site Engine(sm)just links to the site.  We don't care if there are Non-MLS listings, if you have a blog, if you have pictures, if you use a service or write the html yourself, if you have keyword or meta tags, we don't look for type-os, or other mistakes - we will link to you if your personal listings are easily visible.

The YouTube I made www.YouTube.com/watch?v=Y6aYxzfTa_8 explains my ideas a little humorously, but truthfully.

Happy Selling and Listing!

Heath Coker  www.CapeGroup.com Cape Cod Real Estate

www.REindex.com REindex.com, The Site Engine(sm)  Pronounced: Are-ee-index

I have been talking to agents and brokers all over the country over the last few months and I am amazed that no one knows about the NWMLS's decision to stop feeding their listings to sites like Rltr dot com.

It may be that everyone is so busy in their market that they don't read what is happening in the industry. Or it could be that most "news" rss feeders are advertising driven and they don't want to bite their advertiser's hands. Or it could be that the managers and staff in the offices of the MLSs are not operating in the interests of their members in exchange for who knows what from the sites that depend on MLS data for survival.

In any case, most licensees in the country are starting to question the feeds sent to sites that are competing for search engine ranks and leads. In what other industry do the people who do the work, provide a work product that decreases their income? I can't think of one.

How does providing work product decrease their income? At the very least it increases their expenses. Sites that do not use their own listings to gain traffic make them spend money to buy ads, hire seo techs, and steal time by making blogs or backlink efforts or keyword research manditory.

If they are feeding their competition with the material used to compete with, why is there surprise that SEO is so hard and time consuming? What would real estate search results be like in your area if you didn't have the big agregators using your content against you?

Not against you? Think of it this way, they are standing outside your office door interfering with your customers. Here is a YouTube (2.5Min) that humorously explains it. REindex.com, The Site Engine^sm