We’re about to unveil a new version of the Seller Savings Comparison chart for the broker websites. The new version will allow you to personalize the chart to show your set fee, and your sellers can enter their home’s value and calculate their potential savings.
We have some design work to complete before we recommend adding the page to your site, but here is a preview of the basic structure. In the example, the seller has entered $200,000 as his home’s value, and the broker has a set fee of $3,690 and a showing fee of $2,000.
The new Seller Savings Comparison chart will allow you to enter your office's set fee and your seller to calculate his potential savings.
You can populate the chart with your set fee and showing fee by logging into your OMS, clicking on “Setup” in the drop-down menu and selecting “website” from the submenu. You will add in your set fee and showing fee as shown in the example below.
This is where you enter your set fee and showing fee in the OMS.
If you have any questions about how to use the chart or how to fill it in with your set fee and showing fee, please contact us. The chart will be ready for you to publish soon. We will keep you updated.
Cynthia Stevens of Help-U-Sell Central Properties in Chandler, Ariz.
Cynthia Stevens has weathered her local market’s ups and downs and secured fourth place in seller-side closings in the Winter Warm-Up Contest. Her office, Help-U-Sell Central Properties in Chandler, Ariz., is growing, partially due to the market for distressed properties.
“I was fortunate enough to get hired by Fannie Mae as a listing broker for their REO properties,” says Stevens. “Overall, we are seeing fewer REOs but more short sales and also more new home sales. I think this year will be very interesting!”
Stevens says she enjoys helping people with their real estate transactions. In fact, the largest factor in her decision to purchase a Help-U-Sell office was the concept of consumer choice. “By allowing consumers to have a say in how they sell their home, they are more connected to the process,” she says.
Central Properties’ goals for 2012 are to continue to work with Fannie Mae and also to try to obtain more short sale listings. Stevens would like to increase the office’s sales by 25 percent over 2011, when the office closed 42 sides.
She advises new brokers to connect with other brokers, agents, loan officers and any other people who can provide insight into the local market. A broker should also really know his product and be able to discuss it with anyone he meets. Lastly, she advocates consistent marketing: “Let everyone know you are here!”
The results are in for our Winter Warm-Up Contest! During the contest, which started Nov. 1 and ended Feb. 29, Help-U-Sell offices earned points for each new listing, each closed buyer side and each closed seller side.
The top three offices in total points have earned admin fees and Help-U-Sell shirts. The top point-getter in each of the three categories (new listings, closed buyer sides and closed seller sides) also have won prizes. Note: Offices that won in the total-points category were not eligible to win in the individual categories, and no one could win in more than one category. For more information about the points and the prizes, read the initial Connect post about the contest.
We are proud of all of our participants. You all really stepped up your efforts, and in a year-over-year comparison, Help-U-Sell offices produced 15% more listings and closings in the November 2011-February 2012 period than in the November 2010-February 2011 period.
We are excited to announce that our new broker websites will be available next Thurs., March 1. The new look is modern, clean and very user-friendly. On the homepage, the top section below the search bar showcases your office listings, featured properties or open houses. Beneath the carousel of listings is where your personalized content appears. We encourage you to record a 30-second welcome video if you don’t have one already. You can also use text and images in that open space to the left of the banners. We also suggest incorporating your office’s Facebook account into your page so that users can comment on your site and you can start a dialogue with your potential clients.
Here's the standard version of the new Help-U-Sell Real Estate broker website homepage.
The new website design’s search functionality, which will be on every page of the site, combines the best of the intelligent search and the filtered search. Users will be able to type in what they’re looking for and choose from drop-down menus for property type, status, number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms. The user can also enter a price range and the farthest distance from his chosen city(or cities) he wants to see results from.
Users can search in multiple cities and filter the search results in a number of ways from any page on the broker's website.
Brokers will have more freedom to control their sites to suit their markets. You will be able to change the names of the navigation headers, such as “Buyers” and “Finance.” Also, if your office doesn’t deal with commercial property or if you have no rentals, you can remove those options from the type and status filters, respectively.
On the map page, users can further refine their search results.
Like in the map view, the properties in the list view can be sorted by Office Listings First, Latest First, Price: High-Low and Price: Low-High. You can select which sorting category is the default. On mouse-over of a listing, three buttons appear: Contact Agent, Save Listing and View Listing.
Upon mouse-over in list view, a property's agent can be contacted and its listing can be saved and viewed.
The features featured in this article just scratch the surface of what the new website offers. We invite you to try it out before it launches next week. Go to www.testoffice.helpusell.com.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please share them with us in the comments or personally via email or phone.
