Be the expert. Share your passion: BuzzBuzzHome Takes Online Steps Toward Expert Status

This is a duplicate post from David Allison’s column on RENX.ca, a Canadian Real Estate news website.

Today, with everyone everywhere talking all at once, a slow and steady progression towards achieving expert status in your chosen niche is a smart strategy. It doesn’t matter if you are selling real estate or running shoes.

BuzzBuzzHome is one of the organizations who got the memo. They are an online service that is passionate about helping real estate shoppers find homes that are newly built. They blog about it, they tweet about it, they post listings for new developments on their website, they have a new search engine that makes it easier to find the things you are looking for.

And before anyone asks, no, I do not have a vested interest of any kind in this group. I just think they stand as a great example, with lessons for all of us.

Two great lessons for all businesses are immediately apparent; but there are more to find on your own.

Lesson number one: You could always go to the MLS service for your area and find some new home inventory listed there. But the easy availability of complete and robust information on new home projects has always been a gap in the information market for new homebuyers. BuzzBuzzHome fills that gap.

What’s the gap in your market? What’s the void in terms of information that you can fill?

Lesson number two: Keep innovating, and keep being fresh. BuzzBuzzHome is constantly updating the site, sending out newsletters, and using social media like puppet-masters pulling the strings that make the whole system perform.

When’s the last time you updated your blog? When’s the last time you said something about your niche that wasn’t directly about selling your stuff?

Even if you aren’t working in the new home real estate marketing game, BuzzBuzzHome is an online business that you can learn from. My suggestion? Follow them. On Twitter and Facebook and via RSS feed and everywhere else you can find. (They make it easy to be a fan!) And watch. Lurk in the corner and see how they do it.

Then take those lessons and use them for your next project: be it real estate or running shoes or ragout sauce or rat traps.

That’s one of the best things about the marketing revolution we are all living through right now. The people who are doing it best are the ones you can learn from easiest. Be a digital anthropologist, get out there, spy on the leaders, and apply what you learn to your own organization. It’s like a free online course in marketing. You’d be silly not to enroll.

Real Estate Development in the Lower Mainland: Where are the Green Lights?

Like Braun/Allison, Colliers Residential believe that in world that is increasingly transparent, sharing is best, so they came up with MarketShare, the first in what will be a series of reports on the local market in the Lower Mainland. It’s a summary of their findings on the present and future of the residential market that anyone in the real estate development industry can access.

I like this way of thinking, and as such, I think it makes sense to share a few highlights from the report.

1)   The good news for all of us in the real estate development world would have to be that the Vancouver market recovery as a whole has been remarkable.  CMHC’s recent press release on housing starts in the lower mainland is another testament that things aren’t looking so bad. There are a number of new projects in the works, and sales and pre-sales across the Lower Mainland have remained active. Keep your fingers crossed! We’d all like to see this continue.

2)   Improvement in BC-based purchasing power, continued migration from other provinces and overseas, and increased foreign investment will help the Lower Mainland further its recovery.

3)   As well as highlighting and providing market summaries for the various regions that make up the Lower Mainland, Colliers also designated each of these regions as green, yellow or red light areas for developers. The standouts:

• Vancouver-Downtown – The limited number of high-rise condo product downtown, means that downtown is a positive marketing opportunity, or ‘green light’ for developers. But take note, the strongest demand is for product priced under $450,000. I’m hard pressed to imagine what we can build for less than $450,000 in downtown. Micro suites are one answer that a few developers have taken a run at. We’ll need to be creative, as an industry, to make other ideas in this category possible.

• Vancouver-East – This is one of the most appealing areas for new multi-family home product – especially townhomes – and as such has been designated as a green light area. We had a great time helping ParkLane sell out at The Block, on South Main, during the worst part of the recession. Even won a Georgie Award for Marketing Campaign of the year. We love East Vancouver.

• Richmond – With the resale of high-rise condos having increased by 27 per cent and high demand for townhome product, Richmond is a green light area. But we’ve had great success with low-rise developments too. We helped Ledingham McAllister launch Saffron in this rapidly expanding city just this April.

• Burnaby/New Westminster – Strong monthly absorptions make this a green light area as well, while a limited amount of townhome supply present opportunity for this type of product. Last year, we launched Ledingham McAllister’s Memento, which is now sold out, and we’re anticipating the same success with Perspectives, launched this March, and LedMac’s coming soon development Reflections.

• South Surrey/White Rock – Again, there is a lot of unsold inventory in South Surrey/White Rock, but pricing is at peak levels due mainly to new immigrant Asian buyers, making it a green light opportunity. We love the area of Morgan Crossing and are really enjoying working with Intracorp on their Morgan Heights and Glenmore developments.

So all in all, things aren’t looking so bad. In fact, compared to some parts of North America, things are downright celebratory here.

I am thrilled to see a company compiling and offering up this kind of valuable information. Kudos to Colliers. We all need some directional assistance in this cloudy, foggy market, and anyone willing to shed some light on the situation deserves support and thanks.

For further questions, or to be added to the distribution list for future reports contact W. Scott Brown, Senior Vice President, Colliers International Residential Marketing at scott.brown@colliers.com

Honesty is the Best Policy

More and more the market is demanding transparency, so how real estate developers promote the homes they have for sale needs to be done differently.

Developers need to be innovative, informative and truthful.

Our client, real estate developer Intracorp, agrees. So we set out to create a product together that provides potential buyers with the facts and the appropriate knowledge to make an informed decision about their purchase.

We worked closely with the Intracorp team to write a book. After 30 years in the industry of building and selling homes, the folks at Intracorp knew they had picked up a few secrets and insider tips, and knew a bunch of other professionals who had insider dope to share too. The resulting book, Show and Tell, gives everyone access to the experts’ secrets of new home buying; from architects and interior designers, to mortgage specialists and realtors, this is the first time the entire real estate development industry has come together to dish the dirt.

It’s important for developers to establish themselves in the purchaser’s mind as a reliable and trustworthy company, but how they go about doing that is what we’re interested in. We think this honest and straightforward approach is pretty appealing.

Anybody can pick up a copy of Show and Tell, and whether they choose to purchase a home from Intracorp or another developer is entirely up to them. Regardless, by choosing to be bigger than itself and share its expertise in this manner, Intracorp is extending its brand in a way that is memorable and engaging but non-invasive. Further, the outreach doesn’t stop with a free book. YouTube videos, blog posts, Twitter feeds and more all help educate new home buyers, and help Intracorp build a brand that continues to offer helpful advice from non-partisan sources.

We need to see more of this kind of innovative thinking and marketing strategy from all developers. After all, a home is the biggest purchase most people will ever make. We’re ready to help do our part.

You can get a copy of “Show and Tell,” the free guidebook with new-home buying secrets, by visiting www.intracorp.ca.

Just Die, Will You?

This is a duplicate post from David Allison’s blog on BC Business

Will the dinosaurs hurry up and die already? The future is here.

In several sectors of the economy, hope is on the march. In real estate development, sales are ticking along, with resale volume for July 2009 hugely improved over 2008. The same holds for other industries. Two weeks ago, the Bank of Canada pronounced the big slide over, and said we’re on the road to recovery.

True or not, as a marketer, I am afraid. Some of the old-school brands out there – big banks, car companies, and many real estate developers – put their head in the sand in an attempt to survive the recent troubles. If they were big enough, and well funded enough, they made it through the storm without having to adjust their thinking. And that’s exactly what worries me.

Some dinosaurs seem to have survived the Ice Age. And this is no good.

The economic wobble we’ve all just lived through was a wake-up call to businesses around the world. There is a new consumer on the scene, one that won’t stand for the old-fashioned yell-and-sell approach to branding and marketing. These new consumers want a relationship. They want trust. They want to be heard. They want to know how and where you do business. They want to know everything about you. But the dinosaurs don’t get that. They want it the way it used to be: they told us what to think, we whipped out our wallets.

Active consumers will make our economy stronger. They will make sure that we are honest, straightforward, and real. And, even though she presents new responsibilities, the active consumer will make us merchants better. Nowhere is this more true than in marketing and branding – the interface between company and the consumers.

Some old-school companies managed to survive the recession, and, yeah, I’m pissed about it. But their day of reckoning is nigh. Let them go back to their old ways, feeling self-righteous and smart; there’s a meteorite on the horizon.

My advice to them: use this market correction as an opportunity to clean the cobwebs from their marketing. Think new thoughts. Look around and you’ll see that this wasn’t simply a bump in the road. It’s a brand new road. Get on it.