Socialebb Strategies and Solutions

There is still room in two classes tomorrow:

Real Estate Social Media Mastery 101:
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Trulia
(9 am - 12 noon)

There are THREE social media sites most important in a Real Estate Social Media Business Plan. We will spend time learning how to leverage these sites and establish a social media cornerstone as part of a carefully designed strategy for social media success.

1.  Trulia

Learn 5 Tips for Social Media Success on the fast growing real estate web site … learn the secrets of designing a powerful profile page, create a free blog, and learn the best ways to engage buyers and sellers looking for your help in Trulia Voices.

2.  Facebook

Facebook has 200 million users … more than some countries! Learn how to harness the viral power of the Facebook community in your market area … it’s FREE and it’s easy (when you know how!).

3.  LinkedIn

LinkedIn is fertile ground for building an online reputation, scouting business opportunities, vetting business partners and new hires, and creating new alliances with group creation tools and numerous other cyber gadgets.
 

Why should you attend:

Brokers and agents are using social media – you need to understand the culture to achieve success.

SPECIAL PRICING

Our special relationship with Title Security Agency lets us offer you this class for $25.
You can attend TWO of our social media classes for payment of $40.
Location: Title Security Agency, 6390 E Tanque Verde Rd.,Tucson, AZ 85715
 

REGISTER BELOW FOR ONE OR BOTH CLASSES

http://facebookmaster.eventbrite.com

http://socialmediamastery.eventbrite.com

Real Estate Social Media Mastery 102:
Facebook Strategy and a Plan for Success
(1 - 4 pm)

There  is a social media phenomenon brewing at Facebook as more than 200 million users ENGAGE, EDUCATE, and EMPOWER each other in a passionate online community. Join a nationally known social media diva and put Facebook to work according to PLAN! You are welcome to tote your laptop and air card and participate in a social media lab. Pen and paper are OK, too! Come, let’s ENGAGE, EDUCATE, and EMPOWER!

• Understand the culture of Facebook, where there are 200 million members.
• Who are your friends? REALTORS? Family? Friends? Clients?
• Create a Facebook Business Plan.
• Learn about Profile Pages, Fan Pages, Business Pages, and Events Pages.
• Develop a Facebook strategy for your niche.
• Should you mix personal and business "friends"?
• Create groups for your niche, your church, and your civic organizations. 
• Learn the art of photos: tagging, creating albums, and sharing.
• Have a blog already? Learn how to feed your blog content to Facebook automatically?
• Learn how to use Facebook video to engage your market! It’s easy and fun!

BONUS: Twitter for Fun AND Profit.

Why should you attend:

Brokers and agents are using social media – you need to understand the culture to achieve success.

SPECIAL PRICING

Our special relationship with Title Security Agency lets us offer you this class for $25.
You can attend TWO of our social media classes for payment of $40 at ticket above.
Location: Title Security Agency, 6390 E Tanque Verde Rd.,Tucson, AZ 85715

REGISTER BELOW FOR ONE OR BOTH CLASSES

http://facebookmaster.eventbrite.com

http://socialmediamastery.eventbrite.com

Instructor: 

Frances Flynn Thorsen

… … got her real estate license and became a REALTOR® in 1985. She was an early adopter of real estate technology on the Internet .Frances was one of the first real estate bloggers to receive national attention early in 2005, with interviews in Investors’ Business Daily, BusinessWeek Online, Inman News, REALTOR® Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was founding editor of RealTown.com and worked as Community Manager of Trulia.com. She is CEO of Socialebb Strategies and Solutions and offers an ecumenical approach to blog and social media coaching and consulting services. She appeared on the 2008 list of 50 Most Influential Women in Real Estate in the U.S.

If you are a homeowner in Kentucky facing foreclosure, review your options with a HUD Certified Counselor or an attorney BEFORE you speak with a real estate agent about a short sale! In Kentucky call 866-830-7868 and visit www.DontBorrowTrouble.com.

If you are a homeowner in Mississippi facing foreclosure, review your options with a HUD Certified Counselor or an attorney BEFORE you speak with a real estate agent about a short sale! In Mississippi, call 866-923-4333 and visithttp://dontborrowtrouble.com.

If you are a homeowner in Alaska facing foreclosure, review your options with a HUD Certified Counselor or an attorney BEFORE you speak with a real estate agent about a short sale! In Alaska, call 888-925-2521 and visit http://www.dontborrowtrouble.com

Do you look at social media and wonder if the train has left you at the station?

Take heart! Join us in historic Williams, Arizona for a social media retreat with a leading blogger, writer, and social media advocate Frances Flynn Thorsen. Bring your laptop (we have wireless) and spend two full days creating a social media business plan, and put the plan into effect! By the time you leave Williams, you will have a strategy and plan for the most important social media sites on the Internet.

There are FOUR social media sites most important in a Real Estate Social Media Business Plan. We will spend time learning how to leverage these sites and establish a social media cornerstone as part of a carefully designed strategy for social media success. Facebook, LinkedIn, Trulia, and Zillow.

• Evening clinics - video and Twitter.
• Law of Attraction Blogging
• Understand the culture of Facebook, where there are 200 million members.
• Who are your friends? REALTORS? Family? Friends? Clients?
• Create a Facebook Business Plan.
• Learn about Profile Pages, Fan Pages, Business Pages, and Events Pages.
• Develop a Facebook strategy for your niche.
• Should you mix personal and business "friends"?
• Create groups for your niche, your church, and your civic organizations.
• Learn the art of photos: tagging, creating albums, and sharing.
• Have a blog already? Learn how to feed your blog content to Facebook automatically?
• Learn how to use Facebook video to engage your market! It’s easy and fun!
• SPECIAL CE CLASS - Social Media: Tips to Avoid A Risk Management Nightmare (4 hours real estate legal issues, Arizona real estate licensees.)

REGISTER HERE

Real Estate Social Media Mastery Retreat Schedule

Pre-Event	Planning Webinar (Date TBD) The Webinar will be taped.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
6 - 9 pm	Tweetup in Williams, AZ Place TBA
Monday, July 27, 2009
7 - 8 am	Breakfast (included)
8 - 9	Social Media Culture Shock
9 - 12 noon	Create a Social Media Business Plan
12 - 1 pm	Lunch (included)
1 - 2	LinkedIn Fundamentals
2 - 3	Tips for Getting the Most Out of Trulia
3 - 4	Zillow
4  - 5	Engagement Exercises
5 -	Dinner in Your Own
6 - 9	Masterminding, Private Consultations, Flip/YouTube Lab, Twitter Clinic
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
7 - 8 am	Breakfast (included)
8 - 12	Facebook
12 - 1 pm	Lunch (included)
1 - 5	Social Media: Tips To Avoid A Risk Management Nightmare 4 hours CE credit, real estate legal issues, for Arizona real estate licensees
5 - 7	Dinner on Your Own
7 - 9	Law of Attraction Blogging
Post Event	6 Monthly Mastermind Webinars for Attendees Only

SPECIAL EARLY BIRD PRICING: $250   (price changes to $325 June 1)

Two Breakfasts *  Two Lunches  *  Downloadable Handout  *  Admission to All Sessions  *  Pre-Event Planning Webinar  *  6 Post-Event Mastermind Webinars 

Accommodations:

Sheridan House Inn

Retreat location and additional hotel information will be posted later this week.

Photo Credit: Grand Canyon Railway

Frances Flynn Thorsen obtained her real estate license and became a REALTOR® in 1985. She was an early adopter of real estate technology on the Internet .Frances was one of the first real estate bloggers to receive national attention early in 2005, with interviews in Investors’ Business Daily, BusinessWeek Online, Inman News, REALTOR® Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was founding editor of RealTown.com and worked as Community Manager of Trulia.com. She is CEO of Socialebb Strategies and Solutions and offers an ecumenical approach to blog and social media coaching and consulting services. She is listed on Stefan Swanepoel's 2008 list of 50 Most Influential Women in Real Estate.

There is a lot of rhetoric about the housing crisis that leads people to think things are getting better. Subprime loans came to a screeching halt. The government is siezing banks. Lending guidelines are getting more restrictive. There are creative answers to help solve problems.

In the meantime, real estate entrepreneurs are designing more ways to cash in on the backs of distressed homeowners, opening the door to a round of possible lawsuits that will tap brokers' pockets and drain Errors and Omissions insurance reserves.

Consider the following business practices. Is there a possible cause of action by consumers or banks? Maybe a class action lawsuit in the making?

1.  Are you a foreclosure "expert"? "Almost overnight, companies have sprung up offering you the chance to become “certified” as a specialist in short sales or REOs. Although some of the programs might provide good training, you can invite trouble if you go overboard and market yourself as an expert," said Chuck Kasky, director of legal affairs for the Maryland Assn. of REALTORS at the Mid-Year Meeting of the National Assn. of REALTORS this week.

Certified Distressed Property Experts is a new designation with an educational curriculum focussed on short sales and REO sales. There is scant attention paid to home retention solutions. Are REALTORS with good intentions about helping consumers opening the door to lawsuits for themselves and their brokerages? Mission statement: "To provide education to licensed real estate agents that will allow them to efficiently and effectively help homeowners in distress avoid foreclosure and sell their properties."

2.  Adding loan modification services as ancillary service. "...giving advice to homeowners about seeking a loan modification before they try a short sale ... [a] practice that might be challenged as either unauthorized practice of law or otherwise outside the scope of sales associates’ license." Kasky said.

"If you help home owners navigate a loan modification, be aware that your E&O policy might not cover your actions if you’re sued", said Michelle Lind, general counsel of the Arizona Assn. of REALTORS. Providing such help is considered the business of housing counseling agencies, not brokerages, she said.

3.  Flipping and Double-Dipping. Investors and investor networks are partnering with real estate agents and brokerages. The following scenario was outlined at the RealTown Short Sale Srtategies Group by Dr. Keith Allison, a Tennessee real estate licensee:

"The Realtor refers the potential short sale to Quick Cash. Quick Cash arranges the short sale with the lender and pays for the home. (In his example he used a home valued at $200,000 .. .paying the lender 130,000 and the Realtor's commission for the referral. Next, he turns around and puts the home back on the market listed with the Realtor and sells it for 160,000.) The Realtor never touches the paperwork, yet collects commissions on two transactions."

Think the bank has a cause of action here? How about the homeowner? Maybe the real double dipping is going to happen in court!

4.  Selling Bank Properties (REOs). Lenders are shifting liability of REO (real estate owned) sales to listing and selling agents with addenda that pose greater risk than ever before for buyers of bank owned properties, according to Holly Eslinger (shown at right), broker of Exclusive Homes and Land, and 2009 president-elect of the Arizona Assn. of REALTORS. (Eslinger spoke to REALTORS at the group's Winter Conference in Prescott in March.)

Lind concurs with Eslinger about REO liability: "If you handle REOs for a lender, be sure your E&O policy covers property management activity," she said. "Many of your tasks in selling REO properties are property management functions: getting utilities turned on, keeping the property secure if it’s vacant, even evicting people."

5.  Commissions and Antitrust. Real estate agents complain mightily about an ever popular custom of banks cutting commissions, sometimes right before settlement. The discussion raises their ire in online communities and foot-in-mouth pandemic is growing. Consider the following remark from a Massachusetts REALTOR who bills himself as a Loss Mitigation Certified Specialist:

"I always submit for 6% and so far, have always gotten 6%. When the lenders even breathe the notion of cutting the Realtor commission, I tell them that the Realtor commission is non-negotiable. Plus I suggest alternatives as the situation presents."

The commission is "non-negotiable." Really? Tell that to the DOJ! (Brokers, Do you know what your agents are saying online?)


7.  Does your marketing cost people their homes? Consider the postcard at the right. "Avoid Foreclosure and Save Your Credit. Curious About Short Sales?" There is a web site address on the card, AvoidForeclosureInAustin.com. Is it any surprise that home retention is not a major focus of this agent's web site?

When a distraught and financially strapped consumer receives a postcard from a certified expert and pursues a short sale option without speaking with an attorney or a HUD Certified Counselor, is the real estate agent and brokerage at risk?

I recently attended a Foreclosure Fair in Tucson where a leading attorney in Arizona told attendees that credit profiles are often better served by bankruptcy in many cases. This postcard and web marketing campaign are designed by Pro-Step Marketing. Here is a recent pitch by that company to REALTORS at Facebook:

" .. we are offering a LIVE webinar on "How to Market To Sellers Facing Foreclosure". Special guests will be attending including the instructors for the National Certification Course for Short Sales (they are speaking on the NAR lpanel at MidYear conference) as well as agents who have learned how to take a marketing strategy to their market and generate business from this niche ... "

The instructors for the National Certification Course for Short Sales had center stage at a conference for the National Assn. for REALTORS in Washington, DC this week. Their consumer facing web site is called America's Home Rescue. I wonder how Kasky and Lind would weigh in on agents wearing expert status to hawk commissioned short sales.

Is fiduciary served in the absence of HUD Certified counseling and expertise?

Tom Teece, a REALTOR in Florida, weighed in on Facebook this week:

"Agents should protect themselves by advising the homeowner to get their hardship qualified by a HUD-approved counselor. This should be done before discussing any possible sales transaction. If the homeowner can stay, then the agent is not wasting their time with a listing. If the homeowner must sell, it must be listed with an agent, the hardship ... Read Morewill already be qualified, and the bank will accept the 3rd party verification from the HUD-approved counselor.

"Is NAR not encouraging this responsible action?

"Agent don't need to be foreclosure counselors. They just need to to know how to direct homeowners to the pros. The counserlors become part of the agen't team. Don't try to do everything yourself!"