Three Year Sales Chart

Somerville Condo Trends Mid 2011

list price increased by 10% with the active days on market improving by 12% to an average of 72 days. ~ Overall listing volume has improved by 6.3%% from $66 million for June 2010 to $70+ million for 2011.

There was a substantial increase of 38% or 17 more condos going under agreement from last June. ~ Number sold for the month was down by -20% with the YTD number sold remaining off by -26%. ~ Days on market were at a health 60 days where the original price to sale price ratio dropped to 95%. ~ Somerville condo sales $ volume is improving but still -16% YTD. ~ The average square foot price increased to $394 with the average living area declining by 198 feet to 952 sf.

Three Year Sales Chart

Click here to check out our new camera and what it can do – video

Keep clients top of mind when it comes to tech

BY ANDREA V. BRAMBILA, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2011.

SAN FRANCISCO — Reluctant to engage in social media? Wary of sharing too much of your real estate data? Camera-shy? Get over it — a successful real estate business plan puts the consumer, not the agent, at the center, said several speakers at this week’s Agent Reboot event in San Francisco.Inman News™

“The consumer does not care how many awards you have on your business card. They couldn’t care less that you’re No. 1 since 1987 in your service area. They care about the service you’re going to provide. It’s a consumer-centric era,” said Sherry Chris, CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.

“The consumer is king. Case closed. Period. There is no going back.”

When Chris first started in real estate 30 years ago, the industry was “very broker-controlled” and then shifted to focus on the agent, she said.

“We told the consumers what they were going to look at. We were trained to show them only three or four houses and then pressured them to make a decision,” Chris said.

Now consumers come to agents with a list of homes they want to see and a plethora of information they’ve gleaned from the Internet. That puts consumers in the driver’s seat.

“Our role as a real estate agent has changed. We used to be the gatekeepers of information, and now we’re the collaborators,” Chris said.

Echo boomers, the 73 million-strong children of baby boomers, have changed how the world communicates — they share everything, she said. “We’re in a collaborative environment now. There cannot be any more secrets in our industry.”

That trend applies to various aspects of real estate, from social media marketing to video to real estate websites.

Because of the explosion of social networks in the past several years, a social media presence is a must for any agent that wants to be “part of the conversation,” said Nicole Nicolay, host of Agent Reboot and co-founder and chief creative officer at Agent Evolution, a company that offers social media training and WordPress Web design.

“Who is not part of the conversation? That’s a broadcaster,” Nicolay said. A broadcaster is someone she described as expecting clients to come to them, on their terms.

That’s “someone who is agent-centric, not client-centric,” she added.

The same applies to video. While the vast majority of homeowners say they are more likely to list with an agent who uses video to market properties, less than 1 percent of agents actually do so, said Darin Persinger, founder of ProductivityJunkies.com, a real estate training company.

Why? Agents say they’re overwhelmed by the technology, don’t know where to start, are afraid the video will look amateurish, or they’re camera-shy, among other reasons, Persinger said.

To that, he responded, “It’s not about you. It’s about you providing better solutions to your clients so they make better housing decisions.”

A Web page with video has a 50 times better chance of ranking on page one of Google, Persinger said, and YouTube gets more than 2 billion page views a day —  nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major networks combined.

He recommended agents film short (two minutes or less) videos featuring subjects consumers are interested in: property tours, tours of the local community, local real estate market data, and client testimonials.

One attendee, Soledad Garcia, an agent at Keller Williams Tri Valley Realty in Pleasanton, Calif., said Persinger had inspired her to get over her reluctance with putting herself in front of the camera.

“It doesn’t matter what you look like, but what are you delivering to the people out there,” she said.

Agents thinking of adopting technology tools also need to keep consumers in mind. Forty percent of email, for example, is read on a mobile phone, said Chris Smith, Inman News’ chief evangelist, in a session about mobile tools.

“Email needs to be mobile-optimized,” Smith said, especially when used as part of a marketing strategy.

Tools such as mobile applications are available to consumers and agents alike, so “please don’t let consumers have more information than you,” Smith added.

At the same time, some consumers are not as tech-savvy as others. Attendee Denise Dilbey, a broker at Royal LePage Meadowtowne Realty in Ontario, Canada, said most of her clients are over the age of 50 and wouldn’t know where to look for her if she started blogging or marketing on social media.

“Some clients aren’t quite there yet as far as (being) comfortable with technology,” Dilbey said.

The most “techie” thing she does now is plug her recently acquired BlackBerry into her laptop to get Internet access while she’s out in the field with her clients.

“That’s more important for right now. It will change,” Dilbey said.

On the other hand, fellow attendee Garcia has found electronic signatures a hit with her clients. She recently started using zipLogix Digital Ink, offered as a free member benefit through the California Association of Realtors.

“It’s very useful for me to use with my clients because they work all day and just want to get (the paperwork) signed. They don’t want me to go to their house,” Garcia said.

Brad Andersohn, industry outreach manger for property search and valuation site Zillow, offered 15 widgets to “pump up” real estate websites with information most relevant to consumers.

Top 5 content widgets:

1. Local news: twitter.com/about/resources/widgets

2. Photo and video collections: www.cooliris.com/yoursite/

3. Walkability scores: walkscore.com/services

4. Weather.com: weather.com/services/weather-gadgets

5. Translate into 50 languages: translate.google.com/translate_tools

Top 5 social widgets:

1. Share Facebook information: Facebook.com/Badges 

2. Go viral: Sharethis.com

3. Combine multiple RSS feeds in a single stream. Include content from your lender, title company, appraiser, stager, home warranty person, etc.:Rssmix.com

4. Share your Web activity: friendfeed.com

5. Allow people to come to your site and subscribe to your content:Feedburner.com

Top 5 contact widgets:

1. Online calling: Google Voice

2. Text messaging: RETechBlog.com

3. Free calling: Jaxtr.com

4. Free contact form: Zillow.com/Webtools

5. Free chatting: Zopim.com

I just completed Dale Carnegie’s High Impact Presentations which was a truly rewarding experience. We were a group of thirteen working with three trainers for a two day emersion into public speaking. We all worked together and supported each other as if we were long time friends.  Everyone had success.

The trainers were outstanding.  We were all very fortunate to have Clark Merrill work with us. Clark is a Master Trainer who trains the trainers.  He must have an acting background or serious improve training as he had a great ability to demonstrate what he wanted out of each of us.  I had previously worked with Juline Godin and spent a full day with last year working on public speaking and did I ever need some help. That program was part of what led me to High Impact Presentations.  The other part was my wife Sharon who had taken the training two years ago. She could not stop talking about all se had learned.   Our third trainer, Bill Schoenberg.  Sharon and I met him at a free event in Boston where Bill was one of the presenters along with Juline.  They were all outstanding and I am indeed greatful for thier guidence.

The training is divided into 7 parts, High Impact Presentations  where participants take turns presenting to the group as they are coached.  Each presentation is videotaped and stored onto a zip drive so that it can be immediately reviewed by the participant along with the trainers.  The reviews is done in the third person – what do you think he could do better? It was something to compare my first limp attempt with the energy and passion of my last.

Perhaps the biggest difference for me was the realization that if you truly know your topic you don’t need to try to remember much of what you want to say.  With a little faith it will roll right out of you. All you need is an outline and to focus all of your attention, passion and energy on communicating with your audience. Intellectually I do get that, however, if not for my friends at Dale Carnegie I may have never even gotten close to internalizing this.  To getting past the worry of forgetting what I wanted to say and the crash and burn that can result when you focus on your issues instead of the audience.

Another big revelation comes from comparing what it feels like with what it actually looks like.  I had a huge calibration adjustment.  What feels like almost screaming is nothing close to that and what appears to be exaggerated hand and arm movements only help you to appear energized and passionate.  Wow! Well worth the price of admission and it isn’t cheap.

Ed Abrams, a real estate agent who joined the RE/MAX Destiny office in Cambridge in April of 2011, speaks about his experience so far.

Demand is pretty much a constant in most college communities: the closer one is to the school or public transportation, the better the rent.  Overall, landlords are likely to see lower vacancy rates and higher rents in these areas.  Here in Cambridge and some of the Boston Proper Neighborhoods we have been seeing rents rising with demand and projections of further increases of up to 25%.  It is not uncommon to see students band together in an effort to find a house or larger multi-room apartment.  Ultimately, if they are successful, they can share the premium and have more space.

The challenge for investors in our market is the price of entry.  Investors typically need to have a long range view in order to find the “sweet spot” of a solid return.  We are primarily a condo market.  Much of our two and three family inventory as well as many apartment buildings have been converted where, with condo fees, it is typically harder for rents to cover the bottom line for investors.  We do see parents investing in condos to house their sons and daughters while attending college.  Some take on roommates to help cover the cost.  Some will keep the property if they can find a management solution and the numbers have come to work.  Others simply sell and hope to make a return.

Since the tax credits expired last June we have seen one bedroom condo sales fall off.  They have typically been a constant for us.  I believe that this is, at least in part, due to overly tight lending practices, which is putting an additional crimp on sales activity for the lower-end priced property.  The buyer pool has shrunk which is ultimately increasing rental demand across the board.

Right now the rental market is hotter than it has been in some time and the typically strong one bedroom+, lower price range condo market has been weak.  This is the scenario that usually signals an improving market.  As the rents increase, typically so does the reason to buy versus rent.  This time the cycle has been much slower to appear, at least here in the Boston/Cambridge Area.

Tom Ferry

I have heard Tom speak several times and he is very high energy and brings the benefits of structured sales training into today’s world.  I have yet to see a real estate trainer do this as well.  He has a wealth of experience to draw from having worked with so many top producers over the years.

Tom is the son of Mike Ferry who is one of the original real estate coaches and trainers.  Tom ran his father’s business for years before deciding to go out on his own and develop coaching and training programs that worked with the new media and marketing that came with web 2.0.

I completed the Sales Power Mentor Training Course June 1st and am now an official mentor of this new and exclusive program Sales Power.

Check out some of Tom’s video clips

Cambridge Summary: May inventory was decreased by -4.5% compared to the same time last year. (2009 tax credits ended in April and must close by the end of June). ~ Condo listing volume overall declined by 20.5% from $192 million to $153. ~ The median list price was down -7% with the days on market increasing 19% over last May.

Cambridge Three Year Sales Chart 

24% more condos went under agreement reflecting that the 2009 tax credits had ended the previous month. Sales for the month increased slightly by 4%  ~ Year to date sales were catching up at -11%. Cambridge condo sales volume comparison remains down -3.5% YTD . ~ The median sale price declined only slightly by -$3,000 with the ratio of sale price to original price remaining the same. ~ According to Broker Metrics the average square foot price was $422 per square foot, which is down by -1.2% on average with the average condo size increased by 253 square feet to 1,207 sf.

Condo inventory in Somerville is slightly higher than last year by 2.3%. ~ The median list price continued to increase by 9% with the active days on market improving by 9% to 70 days. ~ Overall listing volume is down -25.8% from $49 million for May of 2010 to $37 million for 2011.

Somerville Three Year Sales Chart 

There was an increase of 17% or 10 more condos going under agreement. ~ Sales for the month were also sharply down by -47% with the YTD sales continuing to take a beating with a loss of -32%. ~ Days on market improved by 19% where the original price to sale price ratio remained the same. ~ Somerville condo sales volume is down -26.2% YTD . ~ Broker Metrics shows an average square foot price at $324 for May, which is down by 1% from May last year. The average condo size grew by 253 feet to 1,270 sf.