iHOUSE Website Customer Close-Up
Neil Case is a successful broker from Antioch, CA, a suburban town on the edge of the Bay Area that has been dramatically affected by both the booming Housing Market of a few years back and the sub-prime lending crisis that followed it. According to Neil, “Antioch is on the edge of suburbia for the Bay Area so our market always has the wildest swings. When the market was great, it was on fire because it was so good, but then when the market turned down, our market turned down to the extreme, but now it is starting to swing back again.” Like in many places it has been a hard couple years. While he was riding out the down swing Neil says his income was cut by about 75%. Thankfully, things are starting to shift again. Neil says, “At this point, just about every house out there is getting multiple offers and selling for well over list price, so the inventory is very low and very competitive from the buyers point of view and there’s not enough listings.”
Like most REALTORS in his area Neil has shifted his business to focusing on distressed properties.
“I think the very most important thing right now is to be very well versed on all the new legislation that not only the state but the federal government are coming out with regarding foreclosures and the short sale and help for homeowners. Primarily we are looking for listings, but we are looking for the listings after we have exhausted all the other options for helping the homeowner stay in their home. We have that discussion with them. Some of them determine they just can’t stay in their home, but we are really trying to get the word out there that there are options for foreclosures; there is loan modification and short sale. We are seeing about 50% get a loan modification and 50% end up having to sell. Once you get that information to them they are very grateful and they tend to tell more and more people about us. We see an enormous amount of referrals once we help someone.”
Neil got his iHOUSE Website within his first year of going into real estate back in 2001, but before that he focused on more traditional marketing to get leads. He would get leads from open houses, mailings, and a lot of “on the pavement kind of work.” Also, he ended up doing cold calls.
“My first broker, old school broker, believed in cold calling. I got some business from it, but I hated it. It was just not my style. It was the past and I knew back then that it was annoying, both for the people receiving calls and for me to make them. I saw the handwriting on the wall. I knew the Internet was the future, back in 2001.”
Now his marketing strategy has gotten a lot more advanced.
“Well obviously any respectable REALTOR® is going to have to have a website,” said Neil. “I do my best to drive people to my website, and I primarily use IDXPro to capture leads. I drive them there with the promise that they can search the MLS, get daily updates, do it themselves without anybody bothering them or salesmen breathing down their neck. Of course they have to register to sign up for IDXPro and then once they get there, there are all sorts of tools that they like to use. I get a lot of repeat visitors after they have signed up for IDX. It has been able to run itself, I don‘t have to put a lot of time and effort into it.”
The market is shifting again for Neil Case in Antioch, CA and by adapting his business to changing times and putting in some hard work he has survived and even thrived. Hopefully that story is repeating itself across the country right now.
