Real estate brokers and agents are an identifiable categorical group in the social media, everybody recognizes their presence talking shop or chatting up the local community. The industry’s relationship with the Internet has historically been mercenary; the principal reason for online presence, whether with a website in 2001, a blog in 2007 or a Facebook page in 2009, is lead generation.

Examine the broker/agent’s marketing mindset. Their commercial mission is to stay “top of mind” to literally tens of thousands of people in their focus community on the off-chance one of them makes the decision to buy or sell a home. Pre-Internet, they did this with post cards; pre-social media, they drip email marketed their community to death, and always asked for referrals. The business has always been perceived as a numbers game based on how wide that network net was cast.

No wonder the real estate industry leads all other businesses (except tech and porn) in the adoption of new ways to expand online presence. The early adopters in real estate are hyper-practical and they figure out what works long before the social media pundits can see the utility. Every real estate social media conference I’ve attended has much richer content than the talking heads at typical tech conferences. Most of my colleagues in real estate will concur.

The paradox is everybody believes the real estate industry are slow adopters, and always describe it metaphorically as the classic aircraft carrier. This is also true. Most real estate agents are slow adopters (say, 95%) because they believe that their job is selling, not wasting time chatting online. They ask questions like “give me one example where somebody got a lead from Twitter”.

Real estate agents are slow to react because they are conservative, only acting on the fear of losing competitive advantage. With literally hundreds of competitors in a zip code, they need that advantage. So the aircraft carrier analogy is apt because the agent community will all react at once. When agents see their competition on Twitter and Facebook, they are obliged to follow until eventually the tipping point is reached when the paradigm of using social media as a marketing tool becomes the norm.

At today’s REBarCamp Silicon Valley, one of many social media barcamp venues focusing on real estate, the majority of the attendees were new to the BarCamp concept. Previous REBarCamps from even last spring were collegial affairs, with all the early adopters knowing each other intimately. Today, the newcomers were there… and that signals the tipping point has been reached. It also signals a kinder industry who are using (and being trained to use) social media to attract clients as opposed to spamming them with unwanted emails and new listings.

So… I’ve started a Mortgage and Refinance services business. I’ve been involved in the real estate industry for over 6 years as an entrepreneur, business owner and consultant. For the past 2 1/2 years, I’ve authored the Transparent Real Estate blog, and chronicled how the real estate industry should adopt the social media and make the business of real estate less murky and more transparent.

I have five reasons for starting a mortgage business:

1. Make the mortgage and refi procurement process completely transparent. I have always professed that finding and closing on a mortgage should be as transparent as buying any off the shelf product with a fixed price tag. Most consumers have no clue about the various fees (some are junk fees like “doc prep”), even hidden fees that have given the mortgage industry a somewhat treacherous reputation.
2. Provide professional, experienced service. The barriers to entry to become licensed as a mortgage broker or loan officer are fairly low, and timely service is sometimes lacking. Frankly, it’s not that simple to get a loan in this recession, and that’s where expertise and service becomes the key satisfaction determinant.
3. Create a new sales and marketing paradigm. Leveraging the lessons of 2.0, we will strive to educate the consumer about the mortgage procurement process. And we won’t contact the consumer unless they ask us to. We won’t have an email marketing campaign or aggressively spam in any way. We’ll endeavor to change the hard sell culture.
4. Launch of a revolutionary Wholesale Mortgage Rate Engine. Almost all consumers don’t realize there are wholesale loan rates. Through consulting, we advised on the development of RateWindow, a revolutionary Wholesale Mortgage Rate Engine that launched this month. Finally every rate can be fully disclosed to the consumer. We wholeheartedly base our quote system on RateWindow; standard quote engines like Bankrate and Lending Tree don’t provide wholesale quotes and sell your contact info as leads to anybody who wants to buy them.
5. Help consumers purchase a home. I believe the next 24 months will be the best opportunity to purchase a home in America because this recession will eventually bottom out.

If you are researching mortgages and refis, please visit our Wholesale Mortgage Rate Engine at http://mortgagetransparent.com/ratewindow.

News media still needs to cover core breaking news – economy, politics, editorial, disasters, sports, local coverage – for credibility as news organizations. What’s being left behind are the topical news – arts, food, entertainment, real estate, fashion, home, books, travel – which seem more suited to coverage by bloggers or even corporations involved in the topic.

In real estate for example, I see more data being produced by real estate 2.0 companies that were once the province of commissioned media surveys. Louis Cammarosano of HomeGain tells me today that their just released survey of Realtors on the housing market was picked up by USA Today, Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News. Last week, Trulia.com, an RE 2.0 site had their VP of Marketing Heather Fernandez talking about the Mortgage Relief Plan on KTVU television.

Content is still king, but production is no longer a journalistic monopoly. In fact, the old line producers have moved into a new rank and file of citizen producers, all of whom are competing for media attention. Companies like HomeGain and Trulia that provide the most original or compelling content get to showcase it in this new media system.

Enter my company, Domus Consulting Group. As part of our consulting practice, we’ve been leaders in educating real estate companies and agents on social media. Real estate professionals tend to be hubs of their business communities by virtue of the constant networking they do for business development.

From our work in real estate, we’ve developed a social network referral system that coaches business networks, teams and corporations how to leverage the critical art of the referral. Anybody interested in our methodology is invited to sign up for our free 3-week webinar sessions starting next week. We’ll also be previewing a new media marketing paradigm for business development that I’ve alluded to in the article Web 2.5 Opportunity – Creating Media Hubs.

TODAY’S ONLINE CONTENT FATIGUE

Web 2.0 could be described as a phase in the evolution of the Internet that facilitated individuals in creating content within the constructs of social websites (blogs) and social networks (as participants). User-generated content was the New New Thing when it first appeared refreshingly on blogs (in 2002 blogs were being recognized as media), MySpace (2003), YouTube (2005) and Facebook (in 2006, it opened up beyond colleges).

Now, the discovery phase of Web 2.0 is over. Thinking bird’s eye level, all the content that needs to be online is now online. For example, there are literally thousands of articles (and videos) about how to raise your credit score, and using Google isn’t really going to help you find the best or most appropriate advice. Conclusion: content creation is now not as highly valued when it’s already ubiquitous and en masse.

However, one kind of content is still prized; it’s in the taglines of CNN and Huffington Post: “Breaking News“. Breaking news, in all its forms from reporting to analysis, holds the most social and economic value – world society reacts, trades and competes with New News.

MEDIA 2.5 – POSITIONING AS THE HUB OF BREAKING NEWS

The mainstream media finally figured out that journalist content creation also didn’t need to be salaried. Breaking news can now be reported by anybody in Mumbai or Gaza. Media measures its worth by traffic, and solidifying the market position of being the hub of Breaking News is where Media 2.5 is headed. That means having producers like CNN’s Tori Blase on Twitter’s front lines receiving and monitoring news stories and alerts from her Twitter network. This reinforces CNN’s status as the breaking news hub when it has dispatches at the borders of citizen journalism. News sourcing is social, every news producer must do this to stay connected with the new citizen news sources and be relevant in the future.

WEB 2.5 – EMPOWERING WEB 2.0 INDIVIDUALS TO CREATE BREAKING NEWS MEDIA HUBS

The New New Media Properties have none of the mainstream media overhead and infrastructure for collecting breaking news – Huffington Post, Politico and video-based Funny or Die are the collaborative media that Web 2.0 facilitates. All they need are writers/video producers who want syndication, and what aspiring journalists/producers will turn that opportunity down? These sites have become talent agencies that trade talent exposure for content quality, and in turn elevates their online presence and traffic.

The window is open, but nobody sees it’s open yet. Any organization, company or even a team of like-minded individuals can now create Politico-type blog network/breaking news distribution properties cheaply by leveraging Web 2.0’s blog and website design applications. A key distinction needs to be made in developing a media property – the content being created and distributed must be quality controlled to attract traffic. Social networks built on platforms like Ning won’t work due to noise and content credibility arising from any yahoo who wants to be a participant. The mainstream media understands this distinction and have been augmenting their journalistic offering with a J-School trained blogger corps (examples: NYT, SFGate), basically trading in the name “column” for “blog”.

Web 2.0 facilitates individuals. Web 2.5 facilitates the development of collaborative websites. The real estate industry in particular can leverage Web 2.0 tools to create collaborative websites that position real estate agents as local “reporters”. Properties like Homescopes leverage Web 2.0-savvy real estate professionals to break local news like the details of recent home sales only they would know about. Seth Godin mentions today that real estate brokerages should create local e-newsletters… this idea aligns with the idea of real estate agent as reporter.

You wouldn’t buy GM stock today without checking Marketwatch.com, and consumers will soon understand they won’t put an offer on a house (in this weird market!) based on month-old data. Breaking news is the killer app.

WEB 2.5 – LEVERAGING THE MEDIA HUB TO ATTRACT TRAFFIC (AND ONLINE FAME)

If you want evidence that content creation is taking a back seat to content distribution, see Justin.TV, an online streaming media application initially launched to allow the masses to chronicle their lives in video. Unfortunately, most people’s 24-by-7 lives are excruciatingly boring, and Justin.TV has evolved into the leading do-it-yourself online Cable Access channel network that facilitates anybody who wants to “program” online TV. Naturally, the most in-demand content are the free broadcasts of subscription streams of sporting events and movies… value-based content is king.

And just so content creators won’t complain that I’m positing the “death of content”, on the contrary, good content creators will now flourish, and gain access to exposure and fame much more easily with the proliferation of the new Web 2.5 content distribution channels (and let’s just call them media).

Media hubs/channels are the antidote to content fatigue by facilitating relevant filtering for discovery of great stuff. Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop and Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo are based on nothing more than the collaborative insights of what is online good “breaking news” content. Somewhat autocratic, but a simple formula. It’s no coincidence that both Guy and Jason have attuned themselves to real time trends as well-networked Twitter celebs.

What I’m trying to say is – the opportunity is build these media hubs is wide open and easy to do… the challenge is to convince your network to participate in your hub. This is the spirit of post-Web 2.0.

Breaking news is critical for making time sensitive purchase decisions – nobody should buy GM stock, purchase a home or car, or lock in an interest rate without checking what is happening in the markets and how it impacts their purchase decision.

How Breaking News Real Estate Sites Become a Mass Media Property

The new breaking news websites like Homescopes, a real estate site of blogging Realtors devoted to granularly chronicling the Northern California housing marketing in real time, is a far better resource for analyzing this local market than any journalist writing a weekly real estate column. Homescopes is planning to expand to having 100 real estate “journalists” covering this regional market. Once this happens, Homescopes becomes a bona fide source of professional real estate opinion, and can now leverage their collective knowledge base by teaming up with the traditional mass media for supplemental content delivery. Imagine Homescopes as a part of the San Francisco Chronicle coverage of the real estate market in the Bay Area… Homescopes’ agents benefit from exposure in a mass media publication that is akin to free advertising.

In addition, Homescopes will be able to leverage their portable social graph – readers can log into Homescopes through their Facebook account via Facebook Connect or via similar channels like Google Friend Connect. Like all social media plays, these various Homescopes social networks will build on the trust and credibility that develops among the membership.

Conclusion

Homescopes is singular in the landscape of independent real estate sites by providing breaking news cooperatively and in hyperlocal detail by its participating agents. No other real estate sites – Trulia, Inman News, Realtor.com – can provide this level of local detail in a news feed based format. Simple to build at little cost, all it takes are ringleaders who see the opportunity to replicate Homescopes in their markets.

Related articles:

Homescopes – providing breaking news for the Bay Area housing markets

Entrepreneurial Real Estate Marketing

Incorporate “Breaking News” into the Website and Make Them Compelling Reads

The Portable Social Graph

A quick graph to show how the topic of Media Transparent – media – makes for more popular, entertaining copy than the topic of Transparent Real Estate – real estate. It took only a few months. Thank you for reading both.

Simply put, brokerages can now leverage their agents into reporting on their markets in real time without blogging. The social media, particularly micro-blogging tools like Twitter and bookmarking applications like Delicious, have advanced to a tipping point where agents can “broadcast” updates in sound bite format. Brokerage sites then aggregate all their agent updates and comments into a stream of compelling news feeds – new listings, info on recent sales, multioffer stories (118 on a house in San Jose recently!) neighborhood changes, new deals – that is displayed on the home page. The analogy: Think of providing a housing update ticker tape, anybody interested in real estate is compelled to subscribe to it and watch it on a daily basis, just like CNBC.

Example: Chase International

Chase International has been a pioneer in providing the Web 2.0 interface between their agents and the consumer, starting with their social network Chase Nation. ChaseNation’s expressed mission is to provide a wealth of commentary on the Northern Nevada and California High Sierra housing markets and create consumer loyalty, even inviting them into the Chase Nation social network. The key to ChaseNation’s success in execution has been their agent involvement to provide that commentary. We’ve recently begun working with Chase agents through our Social Media Marketing Workshops on the mechanics of “broadcasting” that commentary across the web via a variety of social media applications. By doing so, agents directly benefit from positioning themselves as experts in their market. This translates into increased online exposure that generate leads without blogging.

Want to know more about the mechanics?

We invite broker/owners, agents and others interested in the broadcast social media to free webinars this week that will detail how to develop this new brokerage website that “broadcasts” real time information to your customers. Best of all – the system is also free to implement! We’re scheduling the one hour webinars this Thursday from 10:30-11:30 and Friday from 10:30-11:30. Please click here to register.

Testimonials

You can find commentary and testimonials on our Social Media Marketing Workshops at this Twitter based group (called #smmw) where participating agents communicate during our webinar sessions. If you’re an agent interested in learning more about our Social Media Marketing Workshops, we are starting a new 12-week session on Mondays from 10:30-11:30 Pacific time, starting November 10. You can register at this link.

Related articles:

The Social Broadcasting System
Slideshow: Website 2.0, Creating the Conversational Web