NAR Blasts DOJ Real Estate Web Site

The National Association of Realtors officials lashed out in an online commentary this week against a 'Competition and Real Estate' Web site launched earlier this month by the U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

It is the latest clash for the trade group and the federal agency -- two years ago the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Realtor group, charging that it approved overly restrictive policies for the online display and sharing of property information. That lawsuit is ongoing.

The Justice Department Web site promotes the benefits of competition in the real estate industry and highlights potential barriers to competition. Last year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission -- another agency that targets anticompetitive practices -- launched its own Web site focused on competition in the real estate marketplace.

The Realtor trade group charges in its online commentary that there are 'few facts' and 'much fiction' at the Justice Department's real estate competition Web site.

Justice Department officials have said the site is intended to educate consumers and policymakers about competitive issues. The site highlights state measures that mandate a list of brokerage services -- sometimes referred to as minimum-service laws -- that consumers must receive whether or not they need all of the services, and state restrictions on real estate rebates to consumers as examples of barriers to competition.

Search Engine Marketing Strategies - PPC vs. SEO - Part 2

Part 2 of Search Engine Marketing Strategies will focus on Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of increasing your website's visibility within a search engine by implementing best practices that consider search engine algorithms in a site's architecture and content.

When it comes to implementing a SEO strategy - your end goal is to maintain the #1 position within the organic results of a SERP for your key phrases.  Everyone is competing for this #1 position because the top spot gets the most FREE TRAFFIC (free in terms of no variable costs per click) driven to their website.  Optimizing your website for industry relevant keyword phrases is a long term search engine marketing strategy that takes a lot of time and expertise to implement, and since Google is consistently updating their algorithm - a years worth of progress can be lost rather quickly if a major update to the algorithm is released.  (Note: Google is a $162 Billion dollar company that only makes money if you click on the sponsored listings so it is in their best interest to make it very difficult for you to achieve first page results in the organic listings.)

As the search industry space continues to grow from a users perspective, a firm's ability to maintain a top position for broad search terms such as "new homes", "new homes phoenix","Washington DC new homes", "cars for sale", "vacation rentals", etc... is becoming more and more difficult.  Everyone wants to be #1 on Google, they just don't understand the time and commitment it takes to get there.

Check back soon to learn the most important on page attribute to SEO.

Improving Your Lead Close Rate

How many times has someone suggested that you treat your Internet leads differently from your normal physical traffic? Pundits and sales trainers often tell you this. Since these buyers have already visited you online, you have to treat them differently. They tell you to treat them as a Be-Back. The explanation for this prescription is quite logical. First, the Internet is an integral part of more than 80% of shoppers’ new home searches. Second, it is annoying and a waste of time to go through all the general information about the community that these prospects already know. Finally, you are wasting a tremendous opportunity to move the dialogue and sale along by not treating these folks differently. These prospects have already read about the community and looked at plans and inventory, and may already be comfortable with the location, product and price. Well, those pundits and sales trainers are right. What they rarely explain is how you should treat these Internet savvy buyers differently.

This month, I share with you what it means to treat Internet traffic as Be-Back. I loosely paraphrase from a script Myers Barnes delivered at IBS in 2006. Myers is a friend, so I hope he will forgive me for butchering his carefully crafted script. What he had to say was quite profound, because it is a short-cut to improving your Internet-related closing rates. Here it goes:

Salesperson: Welcome to Winding Creek. Thank you for coming in today. May I ask you a question?

Prospect: Certainly.

Salesperson: Our marketing department tells us that a large percentage of our customers visit our website before visiting this location. Did you happen to visit us online before coming in today? [I know it seems to be far too leading of a question]

Prospect: Why, yes, we did.

Salesperson: Great. So, we could say that this is more like your second visit to Winding Creek. Isn’t that right?

Prospect: I guess so.

Salesperson: Welcome back. Tell me. When you visited us online, were there any plans that you remember particularly liking?

Prospect: Well, there was one. I think you call it the Collette.

Salesperson: Fantastic. We happen to have a model of the Collette available here to see. Should we have a look?

Prospect: That would be great.

That wasn’t too bad, was it? You will have to practice, and a little role playing will go a long way to making it natural. You will soon be cutting short the critical path and jumping ahead into your product demonstration. More importantly, you will close more sales.

Sales in the City-How To Meet The Needs Of The Single Female Homebuyer

51% of all American women are single! This is probably not a surprise to most of the design center managers who are in touch with their clientele, but the single woman home buyer is now making 22% of all US home purchases! Builders are starting to listen to what this home buyer wants and needs in their home, and the experience they seek in the home purchase experience.

While writing an upcoming article, I began to see just how much opportunity there is in gearing our sales approach to this consumer, and offering the amenities she needs.Despite the title of this post, this segment is not just the young, urban career woman. Single woman home purchasers are young singles, single moms, middle-aged singles and active adults. Each of these groups has specific needs your design center staff can speak to.

Meagan Kato, a consumer strategist, indicates there are five values that will help you connect to this woman: Empowerment, Identity, Control, Security and Family. She will relate to lifestyle photos of a single mom, or of a single woman entertaining friends for dinner. Ask manufacturer partners for point-of-sale signing and marketing materials designed with this segment in mind.

From a merchandising perspective, it is very important that your design center feel as 'retail' and consumer centric as possible. She will expect nothing less. This consumer will gather information and research from many different arena's, including gathering friend's advice, printed material, the Internet, and repeat visits to your design center (and to the competitor's, I will also add). An electronic selection tool/virtual design center is a fabulous selling tool that will also give this consumer the information she wants at the time she needs it. (Hearth and Home has been very successful reaching this consumer using the Envision selection and education tool).

Krisann Parker-Brown is the merchandising manager for Hearth and Home Technologies, the leading manufacturer and retailer of fireplaces and hearth systems. Krisann supports design centers and new construction builders in presenting Heat & Glo, Heatilator and Quadra-Fire hearth systems, and consulting on design center merchandising, point of sale and the consumer experience. Contact her at brownkr@hearthnhome.com or 952-985-6537

Getting Bang Out of Your Marketing Bucks

by Blair Kuhnen

Are you looking at tighter marketing budgets in 2007? Faced with tougher markets, more aggressive competition, and apathetic consumers, we all have to become smarter about how we spend marketing dollars. To become smarter, you have to do two things. First, you need to assess the performance of each dollar you spend. Second, you have to reallocate your spending to where your company gets its best results.

Envision Delivers Immediate ROI

by Melissa Morman

Wow!  Since going live 2.5 years ago, Envision has matured into a stable enterprise application, and now over 20K buyers have become 'Envision Enabled'!  The best news is that the Envision Builders & Manufacturers are experiencing some great results - some that we theorized would be possible, and others that are unexpected benefits. 

Here are some highlights:

-- Options upgrade sales were initially reported with around a 10-15% increase, which in and of itself is exciting, as this delivers several thousands of dollars of margin to the bottom line. However, as builders have become more sophisticated in using Envision features such as packaging, we are now starting to see sales increases in the 30% and up range! As soon as we have hard data to share, we will pass it along, but suffice it to say that Envision has delivered on this very important metric. This accomplishment is starting to capture the attention of the guys who own the P&L in the builder organizations. In this time of reduced units, increasing the margin per home has become extremely critical. With just the sale of one or two additional electrical plugs, the Envision product is paid for!

-- One of our top five builders reported an increase in JD Power customer satisfaction design center scores from 8.5 to 10 (on a 10 point scale – yes, that is 100%!), a direct result of implementing Envision. While customer satisfaction is high, we are also receiving positive feedback from design center and purchasing personnel. Envision is helping them do a better job on a daily basis. 

-- Envision has many other benefits, which range from increased operational efficiency around internal data management, reduced design center appointment hours, and increased 'stickiness' with the buyer through the design/construction process. An engaged Envision buyer is more likely to stick with his contracted home and less likely to cancel, as he is very invested in the process. 

We are happy to announce the addition of two new builders to the Envision program: WCI Communities and Reynolds Plantation! This brings the total number of Envision Enabled builders to 23, representing a total number of annual home starts well over 150K. Seventeen of these builders are now live in various markets across the country.

Want to learn more? Just shoot us an email, and we will send you a login/password to enable 'members' access. We now offer an online demonstration of Envision every Friday at 10:00 CST, where we will take you on a guided tour of how the Envision product suite works. If you wish to attend, please contact us at builders@newhometechnologies.com. Let us know which Friday you plan to attend, and we will send you an invitation. If you are a manufacturer who would like more information on Envision, please contact us at engage@newhometechnologies.com.

Don’t forget about the upcoming Summit/07, our annual Envision users conference! The Summit is for all participating and interested Builders and Manufacturers. Mark your calendars for the eve of October 16th and all day October 17th!  To reserve your spot now, click here.

 

Improving Performance Through Technology

by Mary Anne Schweers

Demand for new home starts may be down, but now is the perfect time to investigate how performance can be measured and improved upon with respect to building homes and company operations. When demand does increase, builders will be better positioned to manage how homes are built, reduce their cycle-time, and increase profitability.

AJAX - Bringing Interactive Back to the Internet

by Dan Naden

In early 2007, BHI relaunched and revamped the premiere destination for new home seekers, NewHome Source.  The new and enhanced NewHomeSource.com is focused on three key benefits: convenience, interactivity, and immediacy.  We’ve dramatically increased the speed and ease of accessing information by providing new home seekers with a simple search and results interface, map view, and descriptive home/community details. 

5 Steps to Making Your Design Studio Hum

by Kevan Irsch

Builders are constantly wondering what they can do to increase profit margins, move homes, and make their customers happy.  Thanks to design studios, all these goals can be accomplished with one solution - but only if done in the right way.

I spoke with Jane Meagher, President of Success Strategies, a leading design studio consulting company, and asked her discuss the secrets of gaining exceptional results from your design center operations.  She discusses with us 5 steps to making the most of your design center.

In the Media

Read, browse, and learn from articles, blog posts, book reviews, and other relevant homebuilding news with In the Media.  Whether these links include home sales advice, purchasing trends, or big-picture industry analysis, we know the content will be both informative and useful.

Articles

The State of the Nation's Housing 2007 - Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University
"After setting records for home sales, single-family starts, and house price appreciation in 2005, housing markets abruptly reversed last year.  In 2006, total home sales fell 10 percent, starts tumbled 13 percent, and nominal house price appreciation slowed just a few percentage points.  Suddenly, it was inventories of unsold vacant homes that set records and homes in foreclosure that were making the news."

Sell New Homes by Using Your Senses - Rick Heaston, GIANTS
"Differentiating in terms of your customer's experience is the easiest, quickest, most effective and budget-friendly way to make more sales. All you have to do is think a little differently than you do right now. But there's a twist. I want you to think about your customer's experience in a different way; I want you to think about it before they buy."

2007 Gold Nugget Awards: Fields of Gold - Jenny Sullivan, Kathleen Stanely and Carolyn Weber, Builder
"They are greenfields, brownfields, grayfields, and desert outposts. The 44th annual Gold Nugget Awards celebrate Western projects that transcend the norm and reshape the housing landscape as we know it."

Selling by Design - Big Builder
"Home builders' newest ally in sales? Design centers that woo home buyers with wine and cheese among the carpetsamples and light fixtures."

BHI News

Builder Homesite Delivers Comprehensive New Home Listings On Yahoo! Real Estate
Envision Options Management Solution Wins Big at the OTTO Awards

Blog posts

How to Capture AND Convert More Leads
Meritage CEO Fires the First Salvo In The PR War!
Search Engine Marketing Strategies: PPC vs. SEO

Dialing into Your Sales Traffic

by S. Robert August

Buyers are more educated and savvier today than ever before! They know what they want and will buy what they want more quickly when the salesperson does her/his job to present the product and close the sale. Salespeople should be trained to qualify and close each prospective buyer on the first visit, because if they don’t, they may lose the sale to a competitor.

Executive Perspectives

Welcome to the first issue of Insight Inbox, the Industry Consortium’s monthly best practices newsletter.

Choosing a Dishwasher: You Don't Have to Do the Dirty Work

We all know how much of a time-saver a dishwasher can be. What you may not know is all the new and innovative ways to do dishes. They're definitely not the dishwashers you're used to.

Drawer Dishwashers

Measurement Matters: An Essential Tool for Building Your Website

by Christian Yee

Web Analytics: The Ground Floor

Home builders often come to the Google Analytics team with three questions that are common across any industry with an increasing online presence:

“How are visitors finding my website?

How are visitors navigating around my website?

And how many of my visitors converted to customers?”

These are the same questions that RE/MAX, the global real estate network, asked while they worked to develop a strategy for their popular website. In order to make changes that would genuinely help consumers and lead to new opportunities, they needed hard data to justify their decisions. To find answers to these questions, they turned to Google Analytics. (Click here to read more about RE/MAX’s experience)

Web analytics solutions collect data on the behavior of website visitors, providing metrics to site owners that help them improve their online initiatives. By acting on visitor data from solutions such as Google Analytics, businesses can improve their return-on-investment (ROI) from online marketing, optimize their website content, and drive sales or sign-ups (known in the industry as conversions), to name just a few of the most popular uses of web analytics.

Drive the Best Leads to Your Site

Purchasing & Profitability: 4 Keys

by Blair Kuhnen

Measuring performance is more than simply tracking leads and sales.  It applies to all aspects of your business.  The purchasing function has many things to be measured, but it’s more than simply trying to determine how much you might have saved buying faucets.  The biggest benefit of measurement is guiding management action to improve profitability.