Kitsap County Real Estate :: Bremerton, Silverdale, Poulsbo, Port Orchard, Seabeck

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Everyday CK, and Crabbing in the Hood, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

Posted in Featured Homes/Properties | No Comments »

Tags: 346 North Bay Way, Oak Bay, Port Ludlow WA, Puget Sound View Properties, waterfront properties

With over 90% of all Home Buyers accessing the Internet for their Home searches, the responsibility falls on us as Listing Agents to generate the greatest amount of meaningful exposure for our Seller’s properties. Additionally, many markets across the country have a significant amount of competing inventory which demands that your marketing materials offer a quality presentation that effectively sets your listings apart from all the rest.

Fortunately, there are an abundance of excellent on-line tools available for just such challenges! Allow me to share some of the better tools that I’ve found:

Launched in October 2006, San Francisco based vFlyer.com was one of the first virtual flyer tools that I implemented in my business. Shortly after signing up for their service, one of the company founders, Oliver Muoto, called me personally to welcome me and answer any questions I had.

vflyer offers a very basic Personal Plan for FREE that allows you to create up to 2 listings. You can choose from up to 14 theme templates, including several that are ‘brand’ specific to national real estate companies. You can upload up to 9 photos to your flyer gallery. To provide this free service, some Google Ads are placed within the flyer.

vflyer publishes your flyer to 15 high traffic real estate listing domains, including Trulia and Zillow.

There are 4 additional plans that range in price from $155 to $959 annually and allows you to create/manage up 125 flyers. They also offer a great vflyer Wiki and FREE webinars to explain all the various features and how to use them.

vflyer offers a feature that allows you to print or email your flyers. They also provide an ‘Activity’ feature which enables you to monitor the amount traffic your flyer is generating as well as the source of that traffic.

To see an example of a vflyer.com virtual flyer, click HERE.

Postlets is another viable tool that has gained a lot of popularity among real estate agents.

Unlike vflyer, Postlets basic FREE service allows you to create as many flyers as you want, without any charges. However, there are some limitations in the number of available theme templates (10) and the number of photos you can download (6). The virtual flyers you create with the basic service also contain advertising in the sidebar.

Postlets allows you to monitor and track your traffic using Google Analytics. However, page views for the HTML or Mini widgets placed on other sites (e.g. craigslist or ActiveRain) are not tracked.

If you want to upgrade to Postlets Pro, it can cost as much as $10 per listing, but you get 10 more theme templates and the ability to upload a total of 18 photos.

Additionally, Postlets Pro effectively creates a Single Property Website that utilizes a multi-page layout, larger photo viewing size, an embedded slideshow viewer, and removes all advertising.

To see an example of a Postlets.com virtual flyer, click HERE.

To me, selecting RealStateShows as a vital part of your marketing arsenal is a no-brainer, even though it is only available through an annual subscription of $125. The yearly investment is money well spent for all the features and benefits you will receive. A 14-day FREE trial period allows the opportunity for you to put the tool through its paces and evaluate its capabilities.

There are a number of options for what you can do with your show once its finished. You can publish your Show to Realtor.com, Homes.com,  or add it to the virtual tour link on your local MLS. You can create a Show Flyer and send it to any or all of their distribution partners, or use the HTML code provided and post to sites like Craigslist or ActiveRain. You can also create a mini-show widget and embed the code directly to your blog or website. You can even download any show to your hard drive to make a CD.

RealEstateShows not only provides a very comprehensive tracking report for each listing, but they’ll email the report to you each week so you can simply forward it onto your Sellers.

To see an example of an embedded RealEstateShows.com virtual slide show, go HERE.

Since both vflyer and Postlets offer FREE base memberships, I would suggest that you simply try them both out. Use them to market your next two listings and compare the tracking results.

Both vflyer and Postlets publish your flyers to many of the same domains (approx. 15). RealEstateShows currently allows you to publish your flyer to 9 domains.

These tools are designed to make your job easier and provide enhanced exposure for your client’s homes. Incorporating their use in your marketing efforts will enable both you and your listings to stand out from the crowd, and achieve greater results.

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Everyday CK, and Crabbing in the Hood, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

Posted in Technology Tools for Business | 1 Comment »

Tags: postlets.com, real estate business, realestateshows.com, tech tools, vflyer.com, virtual flyers, virtual slideshows, virtual tours

The following is a brief analysis of the combined single-family home and condo market within Kitsap County, Washington for March 2010, provided by Rich Jacobson of Windermere Real Estate, in Silverdale, WA (this includes data for Bainbridge Island WA)

• Properties currently active on the market:  1775
• Properties closed in the last 180 days:  1339
• Average Sales Price:  $284083
• Average List Price:  $295,292
• Ratio of List Price to Sales Price: 97%
• Average Days on Market: 93
• Sales Pending this Week: 87

Seabeck WA statistics separately: (Area 145)

• Properties currently Active on the market:  70
• Properties closed in last 180 days:  43
• Months of Inventory:  9.77
• Average Sales Price:  $290,041
• Average List Price:  $299,131
• Ratio of List Price to Sales Price: 96%
• Average Days on Market: 91
• Sales Pending this week: 3

For additional area specific market statistics, go to www.KitsapLife.com

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE KITSAP COUNTY WA MARKET NOW?

Now that the National Health Care Bill has been passed, perhaps Washington DC can  get back to the task of kick starting our economy and hopefully improving the housing outlook for the near future. Historically, we normally begin to see a slight increase in sales activity as we enter into the Spring season. No doubt the April 30th deadline for the 1st Time Home Buyer’s Tax Credit will encourage some to get off the fence. Rates still continue to hover just below 5% for a 30-year fixed with .75 to 1 points. For more mortgage rate details, go to The Mortgage Porter.

“SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD” AT CSTOCK COMMUNITY THEATER

This coming weekend is your final opportunity to see CSTOCK’s Black Box Young Adult production of “Songs For A New World” directed by students Billy Buhl, Cherisse Martinelli,  and Jessica Rothwell. This amazing show features local teens and young adults ages 13-20. The vocals are powerful and moving, and showcases the tremendous talents of our area young people. For more information, go to CSTOCK.org

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Everyday CK, and Crabbing in the Hood, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

Posted in Kitsap Market Reports | No Comments »

Tags: Kitsap County WA, march 2010, market reports, real estate, seabeck wa real estate, Silverdale WA Real Estate

Welcome back to the 8th episode of our informative series,

“Developing a Social Media Strategy”

If you’ve missed out on the previous installments, here they are:

“Social Media is a Conversation, not an Advertisement!”     “The ‘WHY’ of Social Media?“

“Taking AIM”      “Social Media Sushi“      “5 Keys to Having a Killer Blog!“

“Top 10 Ways to Feed Your Blog.”      “What’s in Your Social Media Tool Belt?“

In this next part of our series, we’re going to take a bold step….

“Beyond The Blog”

At this point, we’re going to assume that you have a blog and that you’ve been diligently posting good quality content there on a regular basis. The content that you generate can be one of the most valuable and effective marketing resources that you have. Think of your blog as the publishing house where your wealth of professional knowledge, advice, and experience is skillfully formatted and attractively packaged for consumption by your intended audience.

Your Blog Content is Like Cow Manure

In order for your valued blog content to be most effective and achieve its fullest impact, it needs to be spread around. The next successive step or key in your social media strategy is selecting the best tools/methods to spread/push/distribute/syndicate links to your prized content, thereby exposing it to the largest audience possible. Fortunately, given the tremendous amount of inter-connectivity being offered across multiple platforms, we have an abundance of viable venues to choose from.

Before we identify a few of those venues, allow me to make a couple of helpful suggestions as you’re evaluating potential sites:

Push Come to Shove

Don’t push or syndicate your content to a site unless you intend on actively participating on that site. In other words, don’t just automatically post a link from your blog article to your Twitter account if you never or rarely engage in actual conversations there. As with traditional ‘Interruption-Style’ marketing/advertising, your links simply become elevator noise to be ignored.

If You Blogged in the Woods, Would Anyone Listen?

Ensure that the platforms you choose are relevant for your content subject matter as well as your intended audience. Few things can be more frustrating than spending an inordinate amount of time and energy attempting to converse with a brick wall. Do the people you’re hoping to attract through your writing frequent the targeted site regularly? Are they actually being exposed to your articles? Obviously, this is where some good analytics need to be consistently employed and evaluated. We’ll discuss that in more detail later.

Go to Where the Conversations Are

While there are the obvious choices of highly popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. there may be other smaller regional or even local platforms you can access as well. Does your local newspaper have a web presence with community bloggers? Or perhaps the Chamber of Commerce or Regional Visitors/Convention Bureau? Even hyper-local Neighborhood Blogs/networks are becoming more and more popular. You need to have an intimate knowledge of the ‘webscape’ of your specific market area and know what platforms/networks people are frequenting to connect and converse.

Stay Focused and Disciplined

When accessing social networks, it’s very easy to become sidetracked and lured away into time-consuming activities that offer very little, if any, return on your investment, i.e., Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.. Even on networks such as ActiveRain we can become overly absorbed in chasing points or engaged in heated debates over politics/religion. Develop a consistent daily time-frame and task schedule for your social media involvements. Being focused and disciplined will allow you the time necessary to accomplish all of your traditional methods of marketing.

The Usual Suspects

It’s relatively easy to identify the more popular sites currently being used for effectively expanding one’s digital footprint and engaging in meaningful connections/conversations with your Sphere and potential clients. I’m going to name a few here, and in our next installment, I’ll begin to break each of them down individually, demonstrate how they can be incorporated into your social media strategy, and used  to effectively grow your business.

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DISCLAIMER: The author of this series is not a social media guru. Any similarity to such title, character or history of any said individual is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

An avid blogger since 2005, Rich has published over 1000 articles, most related to real estate. He enjoys using the tools of social media to brag/boast about the quality of Life on the picturesque Kitsap Peninsula in scenic WA State. He is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Crabbing in the Hood, Everyday CK, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

Posted in Social Media for Small Business | 3 Comments »

Tags: SMO, Social Media for Small Business, social media optimization, social media strategy, social networks

Let me start off by saying I am a big fan of VA financing. It’s one of the few loan products available for active-duty service members and veterans that requires little to no money up front in order to purchase a home. My first two homes were financed with VA home loans, otherwise I would have been a renter for a very long time!

It’s just that I really dislike the whole VA appraisal process. While we have many highly qualified appraisers here in Kitsap County WA, and most of them do an admirable job at determining property valuations, the whole VA appraisal process is horribly flawed.

If you follow any of my blogs, you know I’ve written on this subject many times before:

VA Appraisals and the Luck of the Draw Death of a Dream:  VA Appraisals Re-Visited

Curse of the VA Appraisal VA (Very Arbitrary) Appraisals in Kitsap County WA

Challenging VA Appraisals and Other Urban Legends

The challenge of accurately appraising a home’s current value in today’s volatile real estate market can be a difficult task to begin with. Add to that the rather nebulous and seemingly ‘subjective’ guidelines provided by the VA, and you definitely have a formula for potential frustration/stress.

With the recent sub-prime debacle, and the growing rate of short sales/foreclosures, lenders have really tightened their home loan requirements. This extremely cautious level of examination funnels down to the appraisers who are working on behalf of the Buyers and Lender to ensure that the property is worth the sales price agreed to in the purchase contract. As a result, we are beginning to experience an increasing number of appraisals that are coming in ‘under’ value, or below the mutually agreed contract sales price.

In addition to determining value, VA appraisers are also tasked with identifying any major structural defects or safety issues. Unfortunately, all too many times, the definition of what constitutes a structural defect or safety issue is somewhat vague or subjective. The VA guidelines don’t provide the appraiser with any substantive definitions as to what constitutes a safety hazard or the specific requirements that must be met in order to correct them. And to compound the problem, these items are normally called out as a ‘condition’ for funding, meaning that they must be resolved/corrected prior to closing.

I’ve endured a few transactions where so-called ‘conditions’ were imposed and they ended up killing the deal. Granted, if the roof has a big hole in it or the foundation is crumbling, such issues should be addressed and resolved prior to closing.

Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t always rule the day where VA appraisals are concerned. If a window sill has chipped paint (a purely cosmetic issue) and it’s the middle of January, wouldn’t  it make more sense to paint it later in the Spring or Summer when it isn’t raining? It doesn’t matter when it comes to VA financing. If the condition can’t be remedied before closing, the transaction won’t be funded. Period.

Decks are one of those home features that typically garners a lot of scrutiny. Is it structurally sound? Does it have adequate railings? But what if the deck is only 12 inches above ground level? Are railings necessary? The VA guidelines won’t tell you. It’s completely up to the respective appraiser and what their personal interpretation/definition of a potential safety hazard is.

As real estate professionals, we work very hard and diligently to ensure that the entire transaction goes as smoothly as possible for our clients. Unfortunately, elements like the VA appraisal are outside our ability to control. All we can do is prepare our clients for the frustrating uncertainties that may occur, and deal with them as best we can.

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Everyday CK, and Crabbing in the Hood, or you can e-mail him:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

Posted in Real Estate Bites | No Comments »

Tags: bangor subase, deal killers, naval base kitsap, va appraisals, va appraisers, va financing, va home loans, va mortgages