The best part? You’re instantly texted their contact info, so you can follow up and answer their questions while they’re still in front of the property. More than one agent I’ve spoken with has said this is the most useful service they have in their technology arsenal.

My brother and I are natural tinkerers, so we’ve spent the past several months researching the concept to see if we could build a better mousetrap. Our goal was to make a drop dead simple, easy to use, inexpensive service for busy agents, and today we think we’ve achieved that with our newest product:  AGENT TEXT. In less than 5 minutes, you can stop printing flyers and have a fully functioning text marketing service to present to sellers at listing presentations and to generate more buyer prospects from your listings. Pricing is simple, both the code and sign rider are reusable for unlimited listings, and shipping is included:

• 1 Reusable code: $8/ month, $20 1 sign rider
• 3 Reusable codes: $24/ month, $40 for 3 sign riders
• 5 Reusable codes: $35/ month, $50 for 5 sign riders

To learn more go to our site at www.AgentText.com

In the interests of full disclosure, this is a project both my brother and I are working on.  We think we offer the best combination of simplicity and low cost, but even if you don’t choose our project, I still strongly recommend you consider the switch from flyers to text messaging.  There are many other great companies out there offering a similar service, and you’ll immediately start saving money on the cost of printing flyers, not to mention the time you save refilling flyer boxes.  Add in the fact that it makes a great marketing tool in listing presentations, plus the potential for buyer leads, and it’s not hard to see how such a product could help your business. For more info, go towww.AgentText.com.

Kelly points out:

“According to NAR’s Home Buyer and Seller Survey, the median age for REALTORS® is 54, while the median age for first-time home buyers is 30.  The median age for a repeat buyer was only 47.”

When it comes to real estate technology, the age of a real estate agent can certainly be an advantage or a disadvantage.  If you’re 30 and working with a 30 year old first time buyer, it’s probably going to be a lot more intuitive and natural connecting with them via facebook, text messaging, etc.  If you’re substantially younger you may be a bit too cutting edge and overwhelm your client, or if you’re older, you may be using clunky/ cheesy systems that don’t appeal.

That said, there’s absolutely no reason why any agent of any age should let their age be a hindrance to success.  If you’re younger, you may need to focus on education and building experience by assisting other agents, etc.  If you’re older, you may need to specifically set aside time to get familiar with the latest technology.

We all know the importance of building rapport with potential clients.  As technology becomes an ever larger and more important part of all of our lives, it will become more important than ever to be at the same “technology age” as your clients, regardless of your actual age.

Try it out: Full Disclosure: Online Real Estate Disclosures

Buyers and other agents need to register before viewing, which keeps you in control and lets you track who’s viewed what (coming soon). Anyway, I’d love to hear your feedback, as I’ll be adding new features depending on what’s requested. The goal is to make it the most simple and useful online real estate disclosure option out there.

The problem is simple: it takes a lot of time to troll through the MLS and compile statistics, especially if you want to keep them updated often. Luckily, a new breed of online companies has popped up to help provide you with the charts and data your visitors want, updated automatically.

Altos Research

real estate statistics

The most well known real estate statistics provider is Altos Research, and they’re well known for a reason. This is the company I use, and though they’re the most expensive of the bunch they offer a lot of cool features:

• Good looking charts
• Altos Explorer, which makes it easy for you to design your own chart then paste the code into your website.
• Auto-updating charts, which means once you paste the code they’ll keep updating automatically
• A nice 10 page market report covering your specified zip code.

The downside is, they’re not cheap. Pricing starts at $79 a month for their pro plan which gives you 7 zip codes, or $149 a month for their premium plan.

RE Report

While they’re currently only available in California, RE Report is another solid contender, though without the polish of Altos Research. They offer:

• A stand alone website with a signup form to generate leads
• A very useful local real estate report covering the local market
• Better pricing

They price is $45 per report (each report covers a city or area), which puts them at nearly half of what Altos charges. The tradeoff is that you can’t really customize their charts or offerings.

They call it “Right Tools, Right Now”. I say it’s the right price, at the right time. Here are 5 of my favorites, all at my favorite price of $0.

NAR Profile of Home Buyers & Sellers

2008 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers

If your pressed for time you can always read the NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers Highlights. Though I really recommend downloading this free pdf and perusing it for 20 minutes. It’s packed with some of the most useful and accurate information regarding buyers and sellers out there.

Seeing as your job consists of working with buyers and sellers every day, it pays to know the enemy (kidding!). If you’re going in to your next listing presentation and just guessing what sellers actually want, you should reschedule and read this book first.

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NAR Member Profile

2009 NAR Member Profile

For the curious ones. Ever wanted to know how many other Realtors are bringing in $250k a year like you? Or, perhaps a bit more humbly, how many other Realtors only sold a single house last year? (Hint: it’s a depressingly high number)

Then this is the book for you. Learn all about average Realtor expenses, income, areas of expertise, and more.

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Realtor FYI Brochure

It Pays To Work With A Realtor Brochure

You’ve invested a lot of time and money to become a Realtor, but the sad fact is many consumers have no idea about the difference between you and the unwashed masses of licensees.

So, add this brochure to your marketing packages, and help clear up the confusion. You’ll have to pay if you want the actual brochure (with die cut slots for your card!), but you can download it for free and print it yourself.

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Homebuyer’s Tax Credit

NAR Homebuyer’s Tax Credit Brochure

There’s not a ton of time left, but jig’s not quite up on the 2009 Homebuyer’s Tax Credit. Download this pdf, and you can email it to clients instead of pretending your a tax advisor and trying to explain it yourself.

Also a great resource to include as a download on your website… I smell a lead generator…

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FHA Real Estate Guide

NAR FHA Guide and Toolkit

Unless you’ve been out of the country for the past year, you’ve probably noticed that government seems to be playing a larger and larger role in our economy. The same holds true for our real estate economy, and if you’re not yet familiar with FHA loans, click the purple book and start your journey down the rabbit hole.

#1 Animoto

Hands down Animoto is the coolest real estate technology tool on this list.  Just upload your photos, pick from one of hundreds of top shelf soundtracks, and they’ll automatically create a stunning slideshow.

Seriously, it’s way beyond your run of the mill real estate slideshow.  Designed by former film and TV producers, it combines music and original transitions to make things pop.  Only downside: the Animoto eyecandy will  cost you $250 a year, since it’s for commercial use.  A bit steep for just making listing slideshows, but if you make a personal video and maybe a few area videos, then it would be worth it.

#2 Docusign

Docusign doesn’t just save you time; it saves your clients time.  And sometimes the difference between goading your client to sign an offer right now and a few hours from now can make all the difference.

Docusign is an electronic signature provider (check with your broker to make sure it’s ok in your area), which lets you sign just by logging in and clicking where you want to sign. It’s perfectly legal in most areas (though again, go double check this), and it’s fast and easy to use.

I remember meeting with a buyer once. They casually strolled in 22 hours after getting a counter offer from the seller, ready to sit down and sign the thing.  Literally while they were signing, a fax comes in from the seller withdrawing the counter because they received a new, better offer.  Now I email documents through Docusign, and usually get it back in about 20 minutes. End of story.

#3. MyFax

The unglamorous workhorse of the group, but nonetheless one of the most important.  At the end of the day, any of the major electronic fax providers will work.  What matters is that you’re using efax, and not still relying on actual fax machines.

Efax lets you get your faxes through your email, save them as a pdf, and forward them to clients or other parties without the quality loss you get from refaxing a contract again and again.  Combined it with Docusign, and you’ve got a killer combo that will save you hours of time and a small forest’s worth of paper.

#4 Highrise

I shudder every time I get a phone call/ email from Top Producer inviting me to attend one of their “webinars” on how to use their program.  My simple rule of thumb for technology products: if I have to: 1) attend a webinar 2) pay a “certified expert” to teach me 3) purchase and read a 300 page book, just to learn how to use it, then I pass.

Technology should make things easier, not harder, and the guys who make Highrise took this to heart.  It’s a drop dead simple web-based CRM, and while it’s not custom made for real estate agents, you can easily tweak it to fit your work style.

#5 Basecamp

From the same guys who made Highrise, Basecamp is a real estate technology tool that lets you manage transactions.  You can view to do lists, time lines, etc, and you can invite your clients, escrow agent, lender etc so everyone is literally on the same page (webpage, that is).

#6 WordPress

One of the original blog frameworks, WordPress is now all all grown up and is great for making real estate websites.  Because it’s open source and worked on by thousands of contributors, it has one of the best content management systems out there.

The beauty of using WordPress is that you can roll your website and blog into one, saving you money and time.  And since content is the key to getting traffic, you’ll find it much easier to continually add to your website/ blog.

#7 Mailchimp

There are many great email newsletter providers for the real estate industry, so why MailChimp? Simple: I like monkeys.

Child-like love of monkeys not enough to sway you? How about: 1) one of the easiest to use email marketing programs out there. 2) powerful features like a/b split testing, google analytics integration 3) turning producing your monthly newsletter into a fun project.

#8 Facebook

I’m starting to wear out my f,a,c,e,b,o, and k keys form typing about facebook so many times, so I’ll keep this brief: real estate is about relationships, and facebook is currently the best online relationship/ social network tool out there.  Ken Brand has an excellent facebook article, and he mentions an incredibly useful guide to facebook privacy, that I strongly suggest you check out before those photos of you doing a keg stand get broadcast to all your clients.

#9 ActiveRain

The facebook of real estate.  It’s great for making connections with other agents, but don’t make the same mistake I did: only using it to reach other agents.  The real power of ActiveRain is the ability to write blog posts that quickly reach the top of google for long tail search terms like: “Real estate prices in Noe Valley neighbrhood San Francisco”.  Make sure you check the box to make your blog posts fully public, and focus on niche and local real estate keywords to get the most bang for your buck.

#10 My Single Property Websites

Full disclosure: this is my company.  I thought about keeping it off this list to avoid compromising that whole “objective” thing.  Ultimately, I created My Single Property Websites to be a useful, inexpensive tool for modern real estate agents, and it is now truly one of the top ten real estate tools I use.

You can easily make a single property website for your listings, auto-post them to the big RE search engines, and it makes a template for posting to Craigslist and Facebook.  You get a custom domain name, and you can order a sign rider too.  If you’re not using single property websites for your listings(regardless of which provider), they’ll impress your sellers and potential buyers, and they make a great centerpiece to your marketing efforts.

I would say it is an absolute must have, especially for those agents looking to plug the last remaining paper holes in their paperless transaction. To understand why it’s a must have, let me tell a story of how I normally take clients out on real estate showings:

First, I print out paper copies of all the listings we’re going to see. Then, I pack my laptop in the trunk “just in case” we need access to a computer while we are out and about. Then I fold the paper listing sheets into my paper notebook, and carry that around with me to showings. I take notes in my paper notebook, or scribble them on the listing sheets. If he wants to write an offer or do anything requiring a computer, I either promise to do it as soon as I get back to the office or go drag my laptop out of the trunk.

When I get back, I either throw away the paper statements, or wedge them in to an ever expanding file of seen listings that will get thrown away eventually anyway.  One day, people will look back and realize how ridiculous it is to ever print anything just to throw it away in a few hours or days. Hopefully, I carefully transcribe my notes into one of the various web based programs I use to keep track of things.

With an iPad, a real estate agent could:

• Save paper by easily bringing along a pdf of all listing info sheets
• Take notes that will be instantly saved and synced across all their computers
• Search listings while walking down the street or at all the places where a laptop is just too akward
• Effectively search listings and find all the useful information that cant be easily displayed on the iPhone
• Give a listing presentation using full color, animations, even music with spending a penny on printing
• Email that listing presentation right to the client, during the presentation
• Use it as an awesome signup tool at open houses, by letting prospects enter their info right into your database.
• Actually encourage prospects to signup by letting them play around a bit on your website/mls search/ keynote presentation about how you work with buyers

These are just a few ideas, and I’m personally hoping we’ll see some innovative real estate apps in the pipeline!