Let’s play a game of Categories! In the Lasso game you have “New Home Buyer,” “Final Paperwork,” “Waiting on Go,” and “Just Looking”.  While with your current database you have “Level 1,” “Level 2,” “Level 3” and “Closed”.  With Lasso, you can name your prospective buyer’s ratings. While other CRM’s have it manual or pre set up.  Now you can have fun with your database, which in turn will make it easier to remember your prospects. In Lasso your prospective new home buyers will never be at a level where you question their meaning. You can categorize them appropriately as they are in the buying process. This not only makes it easier to glance and see, but for new sales associates, the ratings are easy to understand and don’t require a lot of training.

Make your Ratings fun and catchy! These are your new categories; you want to make sure regardless of who’s looking they understand both the buyers standing, as well as their view point. Some catchy ideas are:
- Window Shopper – Buyer is just looking around.
- Looking and Wanting – Buyer is looking and wanting to move forward with a specific plan.
- Ready to Start – Buyer has all the paperwork together and is ready to begin process.
- Ready to Move – Buyer has Paperwork completed and is waiting to move in.
- Home Owner – Buyer is now a new home owner!

Lasso Data Systems makes it easy to set up these rating. Here’s how to set it up in Lasso Data Systems:
1. Log in to Lasso – Go to the Administration Center
2. Click on your Client Name
3. Click on Project Name that you want to add the ratings to
4. Hover over “Real Estate” at the top of the page
          a. Hover over “Registrants”
                   i. Hover Over “Registrants Ratings”
1. Click on “Add Rating Types”
5. Rating: put in your first rating (ex. “Window Shopper”)
6. Add the Description (ex. “Buyer is just looking around”)
7. Click the “Save” Button

Congratulations! You have just created your first rating. Now you’re one step closer to making your sales process more fun and easily viewable.  From here you can click “Add New Rating” at the top, or edit your current ratings that you have.

Now implement. Have a meeting and get together with your team. Find out their ideas for categories and get your contacts set up. Now you’re creating an online sales process that works!

Every video at NewHomesDirectory.com is made with the sole purpose of helping our new home builders get found on the internet and also it is yet another great tool that our new home builders can use to display their beautiful new homes to potential homebuyers.

The next generation of homebuyers are very internet savvy and want something more than a billboard or newspaper ad.  Let’s face it we are in the age of iPhones/Smart Phones that have applications that allow a user to do virtually anything right from their phone which includes looking at videos, social media and websites.  There are five videos that each have a theme:

• Scrapbook: When you look at a scrapbook you get a sense of someone’s creative/fun side to show off their pictures. That is the essence that we were trying to capture to display the scrapbook theme video.
• Photo Album: Imagine yourself sitting with your grandma admiring pictures of yourself and family members in her photo album with the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies in the air. We want to give your new homebuyers this sense of “home” when they look at the photo album themed video.
• Film Strip: You’re a posh homebuilder in Los Angeles and you just built modern/hip condos meant for 20 something’s. To give your potential new homebuyers a mature vibe we suggest the film strip style theme.
• Bulletin Board: To give your new homebuyers a sense of care-free living we chose the bulletin board theme. You can use this theme for virtually any kind of homebuilder.
• Comic Book: Zap! Bang! After watching the comic book theme you have a sense that the homebuilder is funky and willing to take a few risks to reach potential new homebuyers.

If you would like to find out how you can get one of these amazing videos for your new home community contact us at NewHomesDirectory.com or by calling 866-540-6607.

On May 26th, 2010 the Inland Empire Sales and Marketing Council help the 2010 Realtor Palooza: The Big Easy: Easy Sales - Easy Money, which offered a chance for the top Southern California home builders and Realtors to get together and introduce the new inventory of homes for sale throught out the Inland Empire. This was also a chance for Realtors to learn about the builder/broker programs and how to qualify buyers with Special Financing and Incentives.

The Inland Empire Sales and Marketing Council of the Building Industry Association of Southern California’s goal is to advance the discipline of marketing and home sales through education, networking and providing a forum for the exchange of ideas.

Present at the event was Louie S. Norwood MIRM, and 2010 President of the Inland Empire of the Sales and Marketing Council. Louie believes that the backbone of the home building and sales industry are the steadfast members who remain focused, dedicated and committed to its' future. Louie is also President of Temps Plus, Inc. Temps Plus is California's premier homebuilder staffing firm, providing new home sales professionals since 1996.

Capital Pacific Real Estate, VP of Sales and Marketing, Jason Watson, was also in attendance at the Realtor Palooza. Jason Watson is a twenty two year veteran of the home building industry who has successfully managed, sold, and closed numerous new home communities in his career. Jason is a board member of the Inland Empire Sales and Marketing Council, and has been awarded several Laurel and MAME awards, including "Sales Team of the Year".  Jason described the Realtor Palooza as an opportunity for the re-sale world to understand the new home builder and to get the standard sale into the market. The Realtor Palooza allows a chance for the Realtors to know where the standard sale homes are, even though they may not be listed in the MLS.

I recently got the opportunity to make a video that is a change of pace for me as most of the videos we make are done to showcase the model homes. The video I made for Ponderosa Homes highlights the quaint town of Pleasanton, California as well as the building process for making their new homes.

Through this video I learned that even though this new home community is not yet built it can leave a huge impact on potential new homebuyers to come and buy your new homes.  This new type of video is showing your potential new homebuyers how it all began and it also highlights what a great town/community they could live in.

So what’s the best way of going about getting your new homes out there through videos?  YouTube.

YouTube has hit a major milestone, it now receives more than two billion video views a day.  You might think your eyes are playing a trick on you but they’re not.  That means each day you do not have a video up on YouTube is another day that you missed out on potential new homebuyers.

Whether you’re just starting out on building the new homes in your community or you are in your final phase, it’s never too late to get your community and company name out there.

Article: "YouTube Surpasses Two Billion Video Views Daily" by Mashable.com

NewHomesDirectory.com offers a new and exciting way to promote your new home community using a unique style of advertisement called a “Page Peel Effect”. NewHomesDirectory.com’s page peel effect relies on CSS/Javascript to create the peel effect instead of Flash or other similar technologies, therefore there is no other plugins required for a user’s browser to see this type of ad.

A demo of this effect can be seen by visiting our San Diego New Homes Directory and hovering over the ad in the top right corner of the screen. Basically, there is a “page peel” in the upper right hand corner of a user’s screen, that when hovered over, a much larger graphic is “peeled down” from the top right corner of the page revealing the full ad.

To create this effect for your new home community, we need two graphics, and the URL you wish to have users redirected to when they click on your ad.

First, there is the page peel graphic itself. This image needs to be 614X638 pixels. The top right corner triangle of the graphic must be transparent (PNG or GIF format). This transparency allows the full ad to be visible when the actual ad is displayed.

An example of what this image looks like is displayed to the left.

Please keep in mind that this image will be contracted down to 125X125 pixels when the ad is not revealed and should look good at both the 125X125 pixel size and the original 614X638 pixel size as well as the transition between these sizes.

Secondly, the revealed graphic should be 500X500 pixels in size. Please keep in mind that only the top, right corner of your ad will be visible when the peel has revealed the graphic.

In addition, the top right corner triangle of the top right 125X125 pixel patch of your graphic should represent what you want displayed when the ad has not yet been revealed much like the demo graphic on the left.

Finally, we will need to know what URL you wish to have your ad redirected to when a user clicks on the ad.

No other coding or other requirements are needed from you to display the ad on our website. No special programming is required on your website, unless you wish to have special analytics installed on your server to track the effectiveness of your campaign. If you have special parameters that need to be added to your URL string for these tracking purposes, please let your representative know.

Mike Sipes - CTO

I was just playing the comic book video Rebecca just made for Epcon Communities and saw a Jeff Shore / Jason Forrest Google video ad overlay.  Had to post it.  Very cool.

Many new homes builders use virtual tours as a way to captivate consumer’s attention to buy their homes.  But have you ever thought about another more cost effect and stylish way to showcase your beautiful new homes?

Using something as strange as a “comic book” theme to one of Epcon Communities new homes communities in one of our HD videos I want to show you how taking pictures of a beautiful new home and giving them a theme that you would never pick for selling new homes cannot only appeal to potential new home buyers but how it can also help them to choose you over some other builder who chose to do the same old “stuff”.

The best part about NewHomesDirectory.com HD videos is that each video is featured on our site as well as NewHomesDirectory.tv and YouTube.  Meaning more places that your new home community is found on and more traffic to you.  The hard work is already done for you, so what you are waiting for?

Research done by Eyeblaster, Microsoft Advertising, and comScore shows that the more a consumer engages your website, the higher the conversion.  Eyeblaster's 'Global Benchmark 2010' report examined billions of rich media impressions and found higher engagement resulted in higher conversions.  An increase in 'dwell rate' from 5% to 15% resulted in a 45% conversion increase.  Dwell rate was defined as a mouse over or some type of interaction with an ad.

Image provided by eMarketer.

Research also showed that high engagement led to a 39% increase in brand-related search engine searches and there are many studies that show brand related searches have a higher conversion than non-brand related studies.

What this means for home builders:

In order to get a lift in leads, there must be ample opportunity for a consumer to engage you.

Ways to increase consumer engagement are:

1. Good content - Site content should be comprehensive and relevant to the entire home shopping experience.  This means school info, utility info, neighborhood info, area info, etc.
2. Add video - This is the easiest and quickest component to increase engagement.  Consumers love video - the constant rising video stats prove it.
3. Have a blog - Post at least weekly and let consumers know the lights are on AND you're home.
4. Have a Facebook fan page and converse with consumers.
5. Have a Twitter account and converse with consumers.

Increasing consumer engagement takes time and money.  If you home builders want a lift in online conversions, you're going to have to allocate more of your budget to the online world.  From my perspective, as an industry, we're getting there slowly but we have a long way to go.  There is still way too much money spent on traditional media and not near enough online.  For goodness sake, all our consumers are online - spend the money there.  All the tools are here for us to succeed; we just need to use them.

Jim Adams - CEO

Although the building industry had a dark year in 2009, Green building seemed to somehow stick out and shine. According to the Multiple Listing Service date, certified sustainable green new homes actually rose the past year in the northern west coast areas like Portland and Seattle. This trend is believed to spread over the U.S. and green building is expected to grow within new home sales. Already new home sales are on a rise from a year ago with March of 2010 seeing the biggest jump in new home sales in 47 years. So what trends can we expect to see in 2010 in green new homes?

1. Energy Monitoring Home Dashboards. The increasing demand for energy efficient homes, the development of a custom web-based display panel within the home, will show real-time home energy use. This sophisticated produced can break down the real time energy use of homeowners appliances, which will help a homeowner change the way they use their electricity. For example the way an electric car miles per gallon indicator encourages the owner to adapt their driving habits, green new homes that offer these Dashboards may encourage homeowners to reach lower energy use. Dashboards will also increase the probability that homeowners of green homes will reach the Energy Performance Score.

2. Energy Efficient Green Home Labeling. Like the miles per gallon label you would find when searching for a new car, energy rating systems for new homes has become popular among legislators.  This energy rating system will make it easier for homebuyers to see the energy efficiency of one green home compared to another. Each homes score will be available on the MLS.

3. Lenders and Green Homes Make for a Better Bottom Line. Lenders have come to the conclusion that green new homes are better for their bottom line. By seeing a trend of green home owners being more responsible and less probable to default on a loan, due to the fact that most green home owners are more accountable and likely to place higher value on home maintenance.  Green home owners are also less likely to default due to the decrease in energy coast within their green home. Lenders are now working to get reduced-rate loans and insurance packages for green new home owners.

4. Less Is More. Back when the housing market was booming, a larger homes lead to greater equity. However since that “bubble burst” this is no longer the case. With energy prices expected to rise over time, and the Federal Reserve likely to raise interest rates during 2010, homebuyers are likely to feel more at ease with smaller new green homes.

5. Water Conservation. Did you know that residential water usage accumulates for more than half of the public water supplied? The EPA decided in December 2009 to implement WaterSense. WaterSense specifies that new homes will need to reduce water use by 20 percent than conventional new home. Mandatory energy labeling in Europe already documents the water efficiency.

6. Net Zero Homes. A net zero home is a green home that generates more energy than it uses over a year. This is done by building a fairly small new green homes that is extremely energy efficient and uses onsite renewable energy like wind, solar or geo-exchange systems.

Blogging has been a hot topic within the homebuilding industry for several reasons.  A few of those reasons include:

• Companies are tentative to let employees free in an open and public space.
• Blogging is a marketing force multiplier. The more employees blogging, the more Internet exposure that company gets.
• Blogging keeps a website fresh.  All to often a consumer perception is that 'the lights are on, but no one is home', because the website rarely gets fresh content.
• Blogging freshness contributes strongly to the search engine optimization of a home builder's website.

It seems that as an industry, many have acknowledged the benefits of blogging but where do we get the extra resources?  It takes extra time and extra people to implement a successful blogging strategy.

But it's only a matter of time before blogging becomes common place within the confines of home builder websites. In February 2010, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that Internet users ages 18 - 29 were about one-third more likely to say they blogged than those 30 and older. Check out these graphs from eMarketer.

The most interesting part comes from the second graph - the reasons for blogging.  As home builders, we've got to hone in on the preferences brought on by technology.  It's not just that younger people are more technology savvy, it's that technology is playing a large part in shaping consumer preferences.  Young people adapt to technology because 1., they aren't set in their ways; and 2. because they have more time to experiment with new technologies.

Younger people tend to like blogging - just look at the image below.

The bottom line is that blogging works in the home building industry and that it is an inevitability of marketing and connection in today's world of commerce.  The quicker we can adapt, the better off our companies will be.

Jim Adams - CEO