Now is the time to stick to your guns and stay in the game. The game has gotten a little tougher and you may be down, but you’re most definitely not out of the game. The game I am referring to is the game of Real Estate Sales.  The housing market is still in a correction stage at this time and struggling to equalize, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s look at the real estate game as the Super Bowl. To survive in this game you have to make sure you receive the right coaching to help you win the game. If you want to make your real estate dreams of becoming financially independent into reality, then you need to stick with old principles (the numbers game) and use technology to your advantage.

Just having an ad in the newspaper, a business card and fliers is still ok marketing, but it is becoming outdated and everything is here on the internet. Educate yourself on using the internet as another marketing tool in addition to the dying newspaper ads, the business card and fliers and add some more skills to go along with the years of experience you already possess and kick your career into high gear to keep it moving.  Use the same marketing mentality, but apply it in new ways. Learn how to merge offline (newspaper ads, fliers, business cards, word of mouth etc…) to online marketing such as your own website with lead capturing technology, squeeze pages to build lists of home sellers and buyers, blog site with rss feeds, video tours on your site, and much more.

Stay in the game. This game has been around a long time and there is no shortage of real estate or shortage of money. There is no more land to be made, but plenty of land, houses and buidings still available to sell. The bad thing is that there will be…. a shortage of Real Estate Agents if you decide to quit the game. Those who decide to stay in the game and weather the storm until half-time will rally to make a great comeback in the second half after a good half-time inspirational coaching speech. When it is fourth and long with seconds to go they will throw the winning touchdown and victory will be theirs.

This article was written while I was thinking about the Super Bowl and to help encourage someone who may be thinking about quitting real estate. I wish both teams the best and may the best team win.

If this article has motivated you or you enjoyed reading it then please feel free to re-blog it, but give credit to the original author.

Houston real estate broker Byron Robinson at http://www.realtydreammakers.com

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I have a T-mobile account and I am ready to upgrade my phone so that I may catch up to technology. I have been researching and can not seem to make up my mind. I would like to see if I could get some help in deciding which phone to purchase.

I am considering 3 phones at this time and they are the Blackberry Curve 8900, MyTouch , and Samsung Comeback ( because of the features not the looks).

I would like to know the good, the bad and the ugly.

1. What features made you purchase the phone?
2. Does the phone have any hang-ups? (such as freezing, like my kids sidekick phone)
3. What do you think is the single best use of the phone?
4. Would you recommend it to your good friend?

Thanks in advance for reading this post and I look forward to your replies. I read every comment and make sure that it is not spam in addition to the spam blocker.

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Just thought I would write about our Houston Real Estate association. Our Houston Association of Realtors has added yet another tool to their site to assist Houston Realtors. This tool was added about a month ago on October 15, 2009.  HAR has teamed up with 8touches to allow Realtors the opportunity to automatically turn their listings in the MLS into flyer’s with the agents contact information and all the pictures of the home in several formats.

There are a lot of companies out there that provide this same service for a fee, but now HAR offers agents the oppurtunity to convert their own listings into PDF flyers so that they can be printed by the agent for free. I see some of those companies losing a percentage of their business from Houston area Realtors.  This is not only a smart move by HAR, but it also helps to build agent loyalty and keep Realtors satisfied with the services they receive from the association. Basically, allows you to feel as if you are getting your monies worth.

This new tool allows agents to professionally create flyer’s, brochures and postcards of their listings in a flash. The data from the MLS is fed into 8touches system and is automatically populated with the agents photo, company logo and photos of the property.

You can also use 8touches quality printing services for you marketing flyers, brochures and postcards with a discount through HAR which also makes it very affordable.

Below a description of a listing that we have listed in HAR and an example of the new flyers that are produced when using the new tool.

A plug for my Sellers home, I have to represent!
This is a gorgeous home near The Woodlands area that is totally remodeled and customized up to today’s standards. It is rated by the insurance company as a new home. Upon entry this home offers a small parlor type atmosphere with a study to the left with custom built in cabinets. Upon leaving the study you enter the Master Bedroom which has hardwood floors and a master bathroom that soothes the soul when entering, the bathroom alone makes you feel like relaxing all your cares away. This exceptional home offers three living areas and each bedroom has its own full bathroom. Custom painted ceiling in dining room looks like a work of art with the kitchen just past it offering  granite counter tops, 42 inche custom cabinets with a built in microwave. Just off the kitchen is a small dining area that appears to be in a small cozy restaurant for a romantic evening. When you travel to the upstairs you have an awesome gameroom for a second entertainment area not to mention the first entertainment area which is real theatre room with surround sound, dlp projector and a 5′x 9′ screen surrounding by curtains, real seats from a theatre with cup holders and the whole nine with lighted steps upon entry just like the movies. This home has a lot to offer and is waiting on its new owners. The outside of the home is beautiful in the daytime and gorgeous at night when the lights come on, the backyard offers a deck with a spa and lush landscaping.

Ok, you get the point this is a lovely home and the flyers that were created through HAR with 8touches is what you see below.

25121 Barmby Dr, Spring, Texas

This is page one of the Flyer created through HAR.

This page two of the Flyer created through HAR with 8touches

If you are interested in purchasing this lovely home, feel free to give us a call, email us or text us with the information located on our contact us page.

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Have Thugs in a neighborhood helped you to build street cred, but in the process made you loose Google page rank? I am new to being a webmaster (but not to the city streets) and didn’t know that I could end up in a bad neighborhood until I started researching about SEO and building back-links to get page rank.

When you are new to a city (the internet in my case) and don’t know which side of town or streets that are safe, you risk  the trouble of ending up in a bad neighborhood which could possibly cause you serious harm. Well to make a long story short, I was driving along on the internet trying to build up my website about Houston Real Estate (joining directories,participating in forums,etc…) and I was doing pretty good and moved from one neighborhood to the next and thought I was moving on up like George & Wheezy of the Jefferson’s until I found myself back where I started….On page 30 in Google.

That’s when I started wondering what happened and where was I located? Then I stopped looking at other sites about SEO and getting page rank (I was probably getting bad information) and went straight to GOOGLE to see what,  if anything , I was doing wrong and I learned about bad neighborhoods. I got really nervous and thought…man I hope I am not in one of those neighborhoods. It made me look at the internet and getting ranked in a totally different way, perhaps the way Google looks at it, but I am not sure.

I started thinking about bad neighborhoods and what goes on in them and said to myself… if Google thinks I am in a bad neighborhood, I could get arrested and wiped off the face of the internet for a while (basically penalized and put in Google Jail) so I decided to find out about bad neighborhoods and if I was in a bad neighborhood how to get out of the neighborhood and back into my good neighborhood.

If you have time a minute…  picture this

You are in a bad neighborhood with street Thugs on the corner selling hot items, drugs, gambling and other illegal activities involving cars, women etc…

I pictured a Thug on the corner stating “I got these links to help you get popularity with those search engines maan, but they will cost you “X” amount of dollars” then after purchasing the links you find out that they are stolen links involved in petty crimes, but it’s too late and now you have to figure out how to get out of trouble and away from those Thugs in the Hood.

This is how I now view the internet and ranking higher in Google.

Thugs = Spammers, hackers, Illegal SEO techniques etc…(stay as far away from them as possible)

Bad Neighborhoods = Link farms, gambling sites, explicit material sites & massive reciprocal linking to irrelevant sites etc.

Good Neighborhoods = Blogs, Forums, Directories and Authority sites relative and relavant to my site that I could build natural organic links and possibly move up in page rank due to the quality of my site and links to it.

If you think that you may be in a bad neighborhood (which is possible, because you don’t know who’s linking to your site), I found a site that checks to let you know of questionable websites that might just be a bad neighborhood. Go to bad-neighborhood and check the links to your site to see if you may be in a bad neighborhood. You might be in the hood if your site has dropped off the Internet.

A future post will be how to get out of a bad neighborhood if you get penalized by the Google.  I am not sure how to get out of a bad neighborhood yet so I will start researching today.

In your idle time please stay away from those bad neighborhoods and don’t get caught up with street Thugs.

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Let me start by saying, I am not much of a blogger, but I have to blog about the Houston Association of Realtors new live online chat app. It has probably been on their website for a while, but I just discovered it and thought that I should mention it to all who have not heard about it as off this blog.

I believe the Houston Association of Realtors is one of the most innovative real estate associations in the country, if not THE most innovative.

If you are a webmaster of a Houston area real estate firms site then you may want to or…. should add this tool to your site. It allows consumers an opportunity to get in touch with you for a live chat on your website while being tied into HAR’s MLS system which attracts thousand of visitors daily.

I think it is a great tool for a night owl like myself. I started thinking of all the possibilities of this new tool and what it would offer to a consumer online with a question wanting to speak to a Realtor quick.

I am usually up at night checking my facebook and twitter accounts before I retire for the night and I am sure there are some potential clients who are just like myself (red eyed and sleepy, but want go to bed) so I will be online at night with the live chat active and if someone should contact me, I will be ready to assist them and build a relationship and perhaps gain a client.

Oh, you can place the code on your site and it will only show up on your site when you have it activated and waiting to serve someone. It is a flashing green button with “I AM ONLINE”. It will flash to the point where a potential client will have no other choice but to notice it.

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I was puzzled and at a lost for words one day when I was contacted by a potential client from out of state that was going to move to Houston because of a job transfer. He asked me “where is the best place to live in the Houston area?”. I didn’t know what to tell him except that Houston is a large city with over 600 + square miles and several surrounding cities that would all make a great place to live. So just to give him some ideas I had to ask several questions to get a feel for where would be a good place for him to live in Houston and I still was unable to pinpoint him to one location right away.

Some example of the questions I asked are:

Do you play golf?

What are your hobbies or what do you like to do when you are not working?

Are you looking for a small community or large community to live in?

The questions went on and on and on but finally we figured out the place where he would enjoy living the most.

I would like to get some suggestions on some places that people around the city of Houston and surrounding cities think is a great place to live and reasons why they think this area is one of the best places to live in Houston.

Name what attracts the people in the area the most. Such as schools, entertainment, close to freeway, malls, etc…

Please no spam comments not pertaining to this post

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