Real estate branding for real estate companies was big in the ’60′s, ’70′s, and ’80′s.  Expensive T.V., billboard, and newsprint advertising attempted to get in people’s faces enough with the hope that they would think of the company when they wanted to buy or sell real estate.  I call this kind of branding “in-your-face advertising.”  Seth Godin calls it “interruption advertising.”  But real estate branding as an effective advertising tool began to fade in the later half of the ’90′s, and has been almost entirely neutered in the past five years.  Frankly, there are many marketing experts who question whether “branding” ever was effective to capture customers.  Real estate branding is an old and very traditional advertising method.  How relevant is branding today?  You can answer that question yourself, whether you are a buyer or seller, with these simple questions.  How do you shop for a house?  After you watch a “branding” commercial, are you motivated to run out and buy or sell a home with that company?

Real Estate Branding and The Super Bowl

NBC is selling C-21 with the argument that 111 million people will see their Super Bowl commercial.  Really?  That would be one out of every three men, women, and children (and babies) in the United States.  First, I don’t believe  one out of three will be watching the Super Bowl, let alone the commercials.  Second, how many who will be watching are qualified and ready to buy a home, or sell one?  Let’s make an educated guess.  Not 111 million.  Not 11 million.  Not 1 million.  Let’s be generous.  Perhaps 10,000 buyers or sellers who are also watching the Super Bowl might be ready, willing, and able.  Of those 10,000 how many do you think are sold by a branding commercial, assuming they’re not reaching for the chips and asking for another beer?  Perhaps 100 people?  Maybe 1,000.  Maybe none.  [The young man in this photo was my son, Jesse Marunde, who played football for Montana at Bozeman for two years.  He was a defensive lineman.]

Real Estate Branding is Traditional

This is why real estate branding with traditional advertising media has been so ineffective in actually generating business.  For $3 million you get 30 seconds on T.V., one time, and that’s it.  It’s over.  Good marketing is not one-shot advertising, a one time gamble that you hope will work, but continues to work to reach customers, and it does so affordably and efficiently.  Consumers have been moving away from interruption advertising and in-your-face branding commercials to “permission marketing” and other free resources that respond to their personal interests and inquiries.  This transition has been occurring since at least the mid-1990s and building momentum especially in the past five years.

Real Estate Branding – Are You Persuaded?

If you watch the Super Bowl, let me know if the C-21 commercial persuaded you to use a C-21 agent.  If not, let me know that too.  If you are so inclined, let me know in the comment section below, has branding ever caused you to buy a product?  Did you ever buy a product off a billboard advertisement?  Did you ever see a Super Bowl commercial, and go out and buy the product?  I think I’ll watch the Super Bowl commercials out of curiosity, although I’ll turn it off during the Madonna performance.  By the way, I’m not gong to be watching the game.  I’m not a football fan.  I’m a fan of real estate marketing, so I’ll be watching this attempt to revive real estate branding.

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The real estate business is dramatically changing.  Real estate offices are closing and agents are hanging up their licenses all over the country.  The traditional bricks-and-mortar real estate brokerage is hemorrhaging, and the headlines lately have been about closures, bankruptcies,  consolidations, and mergers.  As offices close, some agents quit, but the survivors move their licenses to another  ship, a ship that looks just like the last one and often with the exact same name on the bow.

Real Estate Business – Franchises Closing

How is the real estate business changing?  A large franchise office closes it’s doors, no longer able to keep the lights on after more than a year of operating in the red.  The agents are worried sick, not knowing what they will do, until their savior walks in the door.  A broker from a large office across town with the same name offers to take all the agents in with the exact same contract terms:  each agent pays $600 per month and keeps 100% of their commissions.  The agents sigh in relief and quickly sign the new contracts like sheep to the slaughter.

Brokers aren’t generating enough leads for agents, and agents aren’t closing enough transactions to make the brokers a profit anymore.  What brokers need to survive today is a monthly fee from all their agents, and that’s not working for the agents either.  A broker with 60 agents paying $600 per month is making $36,000 a month just for having a building.  Brokers have become landlords with licenses.  This is one of the changes to the real estate business.

Real Estate Business – Consolidations

Three years ago I sat across the desk from a franchise broker who looked at me and said, “Well, we’re feeding the real estate business every month.  You have to do that when times are tough.  But we’ve been through tough times before, and we always come out okay.”  I remember thinking to myself that was a silly thing to say coming from a man who told me he had no business plan, no budget for marketing, and no written vision for the future of his business.  Unfortunately, that same broker just issued a press release that he is permanently closing the doors of his bricks-and-mortar and will be hanging his license with another bricks-and-mortar.  Another consolidation.

The most unfortunate thing about all of this is that the agents who think they are doing what it takes to survive are only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Many of them truly do not know or comprehend how precarious their fate is.  Many of them do have an uncomfortable feeling, and they know something is wrong with their real estate business model.  Just like so many of the passengers on the Titanic near the end who smiled and kept saying, “Don’t worry, everything always works out alright,” traditional agents continue to greet people with a smile and wait for the phone to ring.  But the ship is tilting, and they are at risk.  They just don’t know what to do.

Real Estate Business – Brokerage is Changing

There’s been a huge change in the real estate business but not all agents and brokers recognize what is happening.  Many do not comprehend that they are in the middle of a major earthquake.  Therefore, they continue to do what they always have done.  Underlying all these changes is something very big that traditional brokers are missing.  Just as it is powerful forces that move tectonic plates deep below the earth’s surface, we are experiencing powerful forces causing an earthquake in the real estate world.  As with so much in life, what we see on the surface is merely a symptom of a deeper and much more significant movement that is actually the driving force.  It is this driving force that many brokers and agents have not recognized.

This article is from a segment of Chuck Marunde’s new book, which just came out, the 2nd Edition of The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents, which is available directly from the NewWorldofMarketing.com.  The book acknowledged that the real estate business is changing and examines what buyers and sellers and Realtors can do to meet the challenge.

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There was a time when I had 10 file cabinets lining my office walls, all legal size, organized by various categories and all the files were alphabetical.  I had hundreds of client files, and I felt obligated to keep them forever.  What if I needed something in one of the files, or what if there was a liability issue, and I had to defend myself?

All those files took so much paper and folders and labels.  Creating them also took a lot of man hours (or paid secretary hours).  Maintaining them took time.  But sometimes a file would get filed out of order.  It could take hours to find a misfiled file.  Even worse, a document could get filed in the wrong folder.  That document was lost forever.  Even everyday documents had to be handed to my secretary, and she would put them in a stack to be filed, and what if it never made it to her or to the stack?  Hard files were not only inefficient, they were often an excellent way to lose a document forever.

Thank God for digital systems.  These systems are inexpensive and super efficient for all our real estate documents and files. 

Digital or paperless transactions allow us to send documents back and forth to clients via scanned documents we email or through an online system that sends and receives the documents directly, and digital signatures that also increase convenience, speed, and quality.

Not only can we efficiently coordinate documents with clients, but digital technology allows us to send and receive documents of all kinds to and from other parties, such as title companies, escrow companies, home inspectors, well and septic companies, and other real estate agents.

Apart from the obvious efficiencies, online systems also make broker review quick and easy from any computer anywhere, and state audits make compliance manageable.  One might think that digital transactions would have eclipsed hard copies and file cabinets, but they have not.  Many traditional real estate offices are full of paper and files and cabinets.

While physical files can be misplaced or lost in a fire, digital copies reside on a hard drive, and digital online backup systems save us from almost any disaster.  Real estate agents have so much information at their fingertips now in this new digital world.  Real estate deeds, CC&Rs, plats and maps, and assessor information are all available online in a matter of minutes.  Due diligence on properties and people has risen to entirely new levels.

Real estate forms used to fill up an entire file cabinet, but now we simply go online, enter the MLS number, and the parties names and terms, and the forms are print ready.  Much of what we use is now found in the cloud, the Internet cloud that is.  All of this digital technology does something else that is very green: it eliminates a lot of garbage and shredding.

Of course, one of the great uses of online technology is the subscription side of the MLS for agents.  This sure revolutionized the handling of listings in the back office, and now with IDX data feeds to public MLS search sites, buyers have more information about listings at their fingertips then ever.

Using this technology has revolutionized my real estate business, and my clients love the freedom and power it gives them.

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Sequim Real Estate eBook author Chuck Marunde is pleased to announce the publication of Buying and Selling Real Estate in the Rain Shadow of Sequim in an eBook format for the iPad and other eBook readers using the ePub format.  The book looks beautiful on an iPad.  The fonts can be changed on an iPad (and other eBook readers), and the size of the fonts can be increased to make reading easy for those of us who wear glasses.  This eBook version includes color photos that the original hard copy did not.

Sequim Real Estate eBook for iPad

This eBook is under 300 pages, but includes relevant links to hundreds of articles, videos, and audios, as well as tools to learn all about Sequim, Washington real estate. This is a treasure trove for buyers who want to avoid traps for the unwary and who want to find the ideal home, negotiate the best possible price, and do it in an efficient way using technology and the Internet. While this eBook is written with Sequim, Washington in mind, buyers all over the U.S. will find the practical tips and insider secrets that 30 year veteran real estate attorney and real estate broker Chuck Marunde shares.

Sequim Real Estate eBook for eBook Readers

The purpose of this Sequim real estate eBook is to provide buyers with the local real estate knowledge to make wise decisions searching for their Sequim home and to be better equipped to negotiate effectively to get the best possible price and terms.

I openly share what you might think of as “insider secrets,” because I want my buyers to have the advantage.  You can download this Sequim real estate eBook right now.

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What is the reason real estate brokers are closing offices?  I believe this is the result of a convergence of factors, but there are two main reasons, and in some ways this plays out to the benefit of buyers.

Why Real Estate Brokers Are Closing Offices

First, there are fewer buyers than there were in the good times.  This is obvious, and this has hit the large overhead bricks-and-mortar brokerages hard.  Many are going out of business.  But it is the implications for buyers and sellers that are of interest to me.  For buyers who are qualified to buy now either with cash or a large cash down payment (or a high credit rating and high income), this real estate market is not just a buyer’s market, it is a super buyer’s market.  Later I’ll write an article about the terrible mistake sellers are making in this market when they have an interested buyer, and it is a mistake that is literally chasing good qualified buyers away.  (Imagine being a seller who looses that one buyer in a hundred in this market.)

Real Estate Brokers Are Closing Offices

Second, real estate brokers are closing offices because they have incredibly high overhead and not enough income.  Buyers and sellers no longer need the buildings.  In fact, clients don’t care about the buildings.  What sellers do care about is the marketing (effective marketing), a professional with experience that knows how to get the job done, and an agent with a vast Internet presence (which is where buyers are showing up).   Buyers want a professional buyer’s agent with integrity and experience.  The traditional brokerage is learning that the phone no longer rings off the wall, if at all, that print advertising and local radio advertising (not to mention T.V. and billboards) simply don’t connect with buyers anymore.  Of course, that leaves their listing clients unhappy, too.

What buyers and sellers are looking for is not a brick building but a professional who has a business model that bridges the gap to the new marketing approach that is so powerful on the Internet.  It is absolutely amazing how the Internet has set so many consumers and businesses free to connect in entirely new ways.  I’ve written a book on this subject entitled, “The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents,” which is available on Amazon.com.

Real Estate Brokers Are Closing Offices:  The Spin

I’ve been fascinated with how brokers who are closing offices are framing their business failure.  ZipRealty recently announced they are closing offices in 11 markets.  They don’t admit how many offices they are closing, just that they are closing offices in 11 markets.  That could represent a lot of offices.  They are also laying off field sales staff by 35% and making huge reductions in “infrastructure and costs associated with the Company’s legacy employee-agent business model.”  So what does their news release say?  It doesn’t tell why they are closing offices, what was wrong with their business model, or why they did not anticipate these dramatic changes.

Instead of a story headlining the topic, real estate brokers are closing offices, the story starts out like a great success story, “ZipRealty, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZIPR) announced today a series of changes to enhance the Company’s focus on core strengths in technology, online marketing and its most attractive local real estate markets.”  Isn’t it amazing how some will spin?  We all know politicians are typically spinners, but now real estate brokers are spinning.

Buyers are much smarter than the crowd of brokers and agents out spinning.  Buyers simply use their search skills on the Internet to find a buyer’s agent and search the MLS, and they do all that from the comfort of their homes any time of the day or night.  They don’t need a large expensive real estate office.  No wonder real estate brokers are closing offices.

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Local Sequim Author, Real Estate Broker and retired Real Estate Attorney Chuck Marunde did something which is a first in the publishing industry:  He gives away the audio version of his new book with QR Codes in the hard copy or the eBook version. The publishing industry typically prints a book and later may also produce an audio version of the book, but the audio version is another purchase, often a higher price than the hard copy.  What Chuck has done has never been done before in publishing.  He included a QR Code at the beginning of each chapter so a person could simply use their smart phone and download the audio of that chapter at no additional cost.  QR Codes are like the codes used at the grocery store, and when your smart phone scans it, it takes you to the download.  Smart phones can download free QR Code readers.  Once that application is downloaded and installed on your smart phone, you use your phone’s camera as a scanner.  It’s amazing technology.  If you have a smart phone, you can scan this QR Code in the left margin and download the audio of the book’s Introduction.

QR Codes in Real Estate Book

Real estate marketing has changed, and Chuck Marunde’s new book, The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents is available on Amazon.com for $14.95 or as an eBook download for $9.95.  The book has gone viral among real estate agents around the country, and has sparked some interesting discussions, because it challenges conventional thinking in the real estate business and focuses on placing “consumers at the center of the Universe,” as Chuck likes to say.  He ads that, “Changes in consumer preferences, the real estate market, marketing methods, technologies, and the Internet have all facilitated the most dramatic changes I’ve seen in three decades in the business. Real estate brokers are going out of business all over the country, merging, and consolidating to survive. But the changes reveal much more about the underlying forces that are at work.”

QR Codes and Technology

QR Codes and Smart Phones