As a real estate virtual assistant part of the listing coordination services I provide is posting my client’s home listings on the many internet listing sites, Craig’s List being one of them. I was alerted today that someone was taking real estate home listing posts and changing  them into rentals and stealing rent money from people. A woman who responded to one of my clients listings received a suspicious email response and looked further into it. She tracked down my client and alerted her to the scam. Before I could get on Craig’s List to find out what was going on, my client called me again. Someone had just gone to the address of the listing, wanting to move in. They had paid someone on Craig’s List the rent money for immediate  occupancy to this property. I contacted “Abuse” at Craig’s List” and within five minutes the post was removed. This is terrible for the real estate professionals who post their listings on Craig’s List.

I have now added another task to my listing coordination checklist, monitor and check internet property posts daily. Even a daily Google search of the address would help to alert you of something like this that may be happeneing. I have Google Alerts set up for every one of my clients listings, you would be surprised as to what comes back through those alerts.

Today’s tool is a great free program that can be used by real estate agents when requesting a testimonial from a client. It’s always a good idea to offer “something of value” when asking someone to do something for you. I always provide my clients’ prospects and past clients with something that they can use in every communication with them, no canned crap.

This is a program that helps to create a home inventory and what better time to start this project than when moving into a new home. Requesting testimonials is something often over looked by real estate agents, but so very important to the continued growth of their business. A real estate virtual assistant can handle this task very easily for their clients. It can be sent out to look as if it came directly from the agent if the agent chooses to have the image that he/she does everything personally or it can be sent from the real estate virtual assistant portraying the “Team” image. This is solely a personal preference and is decided upon when I begin to work with a new real estate client.

I have a system for my clients that I handle this task for. We spend a few minutes, one time, discussing it when we begin working together. After that, they don’t need to think about it again and their testimonials are taken care of. Sometimes a new client will review my procedure and not want anything changed, at that point they are done and can cross it off of their lists forever.

When we begin our working relationship I create a template for the testimonial, along with a cover letter and I brand it with their colors and contact information. As soon as a property closes the cover letter is personalized and emailed to the home buyer/seller or snail mailed, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope, if they don’t have email. It’s important to make things as easy and simple as possible when asking someone to do something for you.

The cover letter thanks the home buyer/seller for allowing the agent the opportunity to provide services to them and tells them how important they are, even though the closing is over. It includes a few tips about being a new home owner, documents they should safely keep, home improvement tips, etc. and then lets them know the next page has questions about their home/buying selling experience with the agent, the testimonial. This cover letter also clearly explains what the agent is asking for, why and what they should do with it. It might sound like common sense, but if people are not clearly instructed they will not respond.

And that’s it, I mark it up on my calendar for 2 weeks after the email or mail date. The entire thing is sent out again if we haven’t received a response. Now for the free Home Inventory software that I spoke about. The product information would be included on the cover letter also. By providing something like this it let’s the home buyer/seller know that the real estate agent is still thinking about them and wants to continue to be their real estate agent for life.

KNOW YOUR STUFF HOME INVENTORY

http://www.knowyourstuff.org/

Triple Play

I’m at my first real estate convention here in Atlantic City, Triple Play 2007, this week and I have to say “I’m loving it”. The information that I’m coming away with everyday and the knowledge, is priceless. There are so many vendors here that I never knew existed, it’s just amazing. One vendor that really caught my attention is “The Wise Agent“. This program looks like the REALTORS® dream in contact management, marketing and organization all in one, kind of like a “simple” TP7i. From what I saw in the demo, this program does everything TP7i can do, but in a much easier to understand way and without the contract commitment. This program seems to be extremely virtual assistant friendly, which means the virtual assistant can set it up and implement it with very little effort on the agents part. I’ll be checking the program out in the next day or so and will be back to report my findings. Looks like a complete real estate business management system from what I’ve seen so far.