First-time homebuyers use internet but still depend on agents!

Homebuyers, including first-time buyers, usually use the Internet for the preliminary work of finding homes for sale and collecting information on neighborhoods and recent sales. But those buyers, particularly if they are first-timers, often use real-estate agents to identify long-term value in properties, negotiate prices and ensure that deals go through.

Functions of real-estate agents
Many first-time homebuyers will not be purchasing their dream home as their first place, and often have difficulty seeing the true value in homes.  Many of these same buyers will be moving in the future so it is a good idea to think about resale when the buyer is purchasing. Buyers may not be aware of things like the problem of living on a busy street, or know to check on issues with homeowner-association covenants.


A real-estate agent can point out potential issues that could affect the resale price of a home and suggest small changes to increase the home's value.  When I'm showing a house that absolutely does not work, I dig into why it doesn't work. When we see other houses that may be a better fit, we discuss what does work for them and why.  First-time buyers should rely on their Realtor to provide them with data about comparable homes that have sold, how long a home has been on the market, what homes haven't sold and all the activity that has been happening in the local real-estate market. Ultimately, it is the buyer's decision what price and terms they wish to offer. However, buyers should be able to rely on their Realtors to guide them toward an educated offer on the home.  Negotiation occurs not only at the beginning of a transaction over price and terms, but also possibly after a home inspection, an appraisal and at other times between contract and closing.

To be or not to be social media...

As with many fads they always seem to come and go, social media is one of those fads that has been targeted by critics. If you listen to "non-believers" of social media sites, you are definitely missing out on a lot of benefits that social media can help your ever growing real estate career.  From having more engaged customers to getting new ones, to effectively promoting your products, to being able to listen to your customers conversations and to being able to provide the best customer service possible. These are just some of the benefits you get from using social media to jump start your career.  Once Google and other search engines figure out how to make searches more social and more real-time then the benefits from social media are endless. Be aware social media marketing does takes time, effort and in some cases, money to create, develop and maintain, your "image" Social media critics hold that numbers and statistics are useless in determining social media’s staying power.  Twitter and Facebook might have billions of hits and visits between the two of them daily, but that does not mean that these two social media giants would be around come 2013, does anyone remember myspace???
But does that translate that social media is just a fad? If for anything, the demise of MySpace and similar social sites only proves that social media is here to stay. As long as a social media site stays new and fresh and relevant to people’s lives, then it shall always be around to help us in promoting our image as nice, dependable, trust worthy real estate agents with cool profile pics