photo credit: anneh632

Tips, training, updates, advice, with all of these you would think we would be adept at this website stuff, but were not. There are a lot of tinny little details we need to be aware of when marketing our business, when interacting with customers, when starting our business, when listing a property, and now we need to know about SEO. What the heck is SEO? And more importantly, why do I need to even know what it is, let along how to use it. We all have so much to do and deal with it just seems like so much to keep up with, especially with all the new social networking we need to keep up to date.

Well SEO is Search Engine Optimization, which simply means saying the right things on your website to get to the top of the search engines. Thats it! Nothing fancy, its just what you say and what you put on your website. It is a simple concept, but a lot goes into it, its an entire industry. Here is a basic rundown of what it is and how to use it.

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Posted in Education And Training, Giving Back, GenX GenY, Online Education, Metro Brokers Offices, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff

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The housing market has sunk and the financial market is on the verge of collapse, jobs are scares, and we have an administration racing to see how fast they can bankrupt us, these are strange days indeed. However, people still want to own homes, people still want to invest and be prosperous, so how do we do that when banks arent lending and we will soon be handing all our profits over to the government?

One answer is that if you plan to buy a home to live there and raise a family there, maybe stay there for ten years or more, and your life is stable in that sense, its okay for those people to buy a home, those with a long term plan. Keeping in mind that your home will probable loose value for several years, but if you're there for the long term you can ride out the storm.

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Posted in Press Room, Giving Back, Buyer Resources, GenX GenY, Online Education, Metro Brokers Agents

photo credit: statPaige

City Group had a pretty good bead on things to come. The housing numbers are not good. They are the lowest they have been since 1995. "The existing home sales, completed transactions including single family, town homes, condominiums, and co-ops dropped 27.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units in July from a downwardly revised 5.26 million in June, and are 25.5 percent below the 5.14 million unit level in July 2009."

We all thought the tax credit would help, but it made things worse. Lets all hope the numbers pick up quickly and the government makes it a little bit easier to hire people and kick start the economy.

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Posted in Education And Training, Giving Back, MBI News, Buyer Resources, Online Education, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff

photo credit: chimpasaurus

Remember the days when you came to America and you could just claim a stake in a piece of property and it was yours? Well, I guess none of us actually remember those days, but we remember learning about it in history class. They even made a movie about it with Tom Cruise, Far and Away. There was a large race, and the first one to that parcel of land gets it. Dont we wish it was that way today? Well some people think that it should be that way, and they even push the envelope.

These people are squatting in, not just a house and land, but mansions. How about that? I guess if youre going to squat you may as well do it up right, right? There is a case in Seattle where a real estate agent was preparing for an open house to sell a $3.3 million mansion and was amazed to find out there were perfect strangers living there. Squatters! How funny to see this in todays society.

The real estate agent selling the house said it was entertaining, but the story of our mansion squatters ended when police retook control of the house for the bank that owned it. The fiasco cost his client, the bank, $35,000, not so funny now. The squatting team tried to claim three new mansions on the Eastside. Police say so far no one has moved into any of the houses.

The bank securely attached notes to the front door of all the mansions, "ordering anyone claiming ownership to surrender possession within three days." Also, threatening "judicial proceedings" against anyone who doesnt comply. Maybe we can hold a race for squatters, the first one to break a law goes to jail.

Read more from Calculated Risk, Finance & Economics

Posted in Education And Training, Press Room, Giving Back, GenX GenY, Online Education

photo credit: erichhh

There is a big perception that if you dont actually see someone working, they arent working. People expect to see someone slaving away at their task and they expect to see measurable results from that work. If youre not hitting something with a hammer, youre not working.  Most of the time the work that is done is not something that the average person can measure and track, its a lot of investigation, phone calls, networking, and contracts.

A lot of people think real estate agents arent working hard to help them find that perfect deal, when in most cases the exact opposite is true. Its perception! There are of course, things real estate agents can do to counter that perception. Many times, its just about making a client feel comfortable, thats it. We want them to work with us, not be underfoot and constantly panicking, Im sure weve all had clients like that.

Here are some tips from Franklynews that may help put your clients at ease.

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Posted in Education And Training, Movers and Shakers, Industry Leadership, Giving Back, Online Education, Metro Brokers Offices, Metro Brokers Agents