Condo Blog - A Non-Corporate Blog From CondoDomain HQ

‘PROJECT: Development’ is a new series of BLOG postings and articles that you should expect to see in 2009.  ‘PROJECT: Development’ will drill down and extract the in’s and out’s of all the hot new luxury developments and lofts in downtown Boston.  Forget ‘price per square foot’ and how many bedrooms…you can pull all of that off MLS.  ‘PROJECT: Development’ will give you the MEAT you are looking for!

From sales volume and pricing adjustments to unique units & hidden features, we plan to take you through all the hot and not so hot Boston condo developments.

What should you expect?

Well…we will give you the skinny on what is going on in that development (yes the good, bad and the ugly).  We will also be posting great photography and even VIDEO for our not so shy developers & marketing peers.

Here are two test ‘PROJECT: Development’ articles we did this year:  “Condolicious: Northpoint“  & “Checkin’ out The 1850“

Developers Make Contact With Us ASAP!

Erica is already filling her schedule for ‘PROJECT: Development’.  Make sure you are not left out and you get the ‘transparent’ version of your property EXPOSED via ‘PROJECT: Development’. Contact Erica

How can you find ‘PROJECT: Development’ articles on our site/BLOG?

1.  You can read our blog everyday so you never miss a ‘PROJECT: Development’ .

2.  You can check in on our blog once in a while and visit the CATEGORY - ‘PROJECT: Development’ .

3.  You can sign up to get our blogs right in your inbox via FeedBurner auto-email blog.

Have a project that you want to get the skinny on? Email Erica (erica [at] CondoDomain.com)

CALLING ALL REAL ESTATE BROKERS AND AGENTS !!!

We are currently in recruiting mode to “inject” our business model into all of our pre-existing 33 markets and beyond!  Yes, we have all heard and read about real estate businesses closing up shop or similar companies performing layoffs and cost cutting,  that is not us.  Actually we are Growing, possibly we are onto something here?

As you may know we opened 8 markets since July of this year.  Since then we have tried, tested and tweaked our model and are now super excited to push it out to our remaining markets.  Our plan is to get out to all markets and beyond in 2009 starting with the largest urban metros that we have already existed in since 2005.  See our 8 ‘live’ markets here:  www.CondoDomain.com

Our next 8:

Chicago
Denver
St. Paul/Minneapolis
Miami
San Francisco
LA
St. Louis
Houston

The Gig:

You: An innovative (totally non-traditional) real estate broker or agent who works for an innovative broker.

Us: A web-based buyers brokerage brand focusing on the niche of urban housing and condominium living.  As an Internet driven business, we attract savvy, smart, educated buyers looking to buy a condo in your city and maximize their savings via a commission refund.

The Relationship: You have your own business and keep your own business.  You also have an exclusive partnership with CondoDomain and work with all CondoDomain buyers who come through our website & marketing system.

Skills Needed: High energy, very organized, entrepreneurial drive to become a market leader, knowledge of the downtown marketplace including new construction developments, love people and working with buyers, not fraid of the public spotlight, well spoken with the press, great understanding of the mortgage industry and sharp!

Bonus Skills: (not mandatory) Blogging, Social media friendly (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), management skills to build a team of buyers brokers around you.

I

More on us right here on YouTube & Our Site:

Corporate Video

FOX25 Special

Meet our Clients

Meet our Team

So the past few weeks we have been looking into some re-branding for CondoDomain.  Our websites and business model have been great to us thus far, but in interviewing many of our clients the past few weeks, we have found some MAJOR LEAGUE gaps in our BRANDED EFFORTS & MARKETING SCHEMA and need to resolved them immediately.

Link to our Boston website is - http://Boston.CondoDomain.com

Some constructive feedback from our clients include:

1.  They were unclear what we were at first:  Ad website?  Referral Site?  Actual Agent/Broker?

2.  Many did NOT know that we gave a cash refunds back to our clients until AFTER they purchased?  (Oh my god…talk about bad design on my part!).  These clients bought a condo with us and were not expecting anything and then we showed up with a huge cash check and they flipped out.  Crazzzzy!

3.  Another group of people found out about the refund after being on the website for more than 3 days.  This is something I feel that should be conveyed  within the first 3 seconds!

4.  Most said once they found about the refund they did not understand it?  Did not get buyers brokerage or that commissions were paid by the seller.  We need to educate better on how traditional brokerage works!

5.  Almost everyone said that we have the best product (website) & service (people) available and they did not know it until after the fact.  All mentioned that we need to do more advertising and make it known our business proposition as its “one of a kind”.

So what to change/modify/implement?:

1.  Branding & Logo: Maybe the “.com” at the end of our logo makes people think we are more of a website rather than a real live, local, “people on the ground” company.  Remove the “.com”?

2.  Messaging: Obviously a more clear “educated” message to our audience / buyers. (a)  We are local brokers.  (b)  We are a niche specialist working with buyers only in major cities.  (c)  You get cash back when you buy with us.  (d)  Its not only free to use a buyers broker, but, actually using CondoDomain will save you additional thousands by letting them help you.

3.  Website (1.0): Crisp’en up the site to a more Web 2.0 template that conveys all of these messages.

Marketing Guru’s,  Brand & Identity Specialist, Web 2.0′ers -  We would love your advice & feedback.  Feel free to leave a comment or email me directly!

Thank you!!!

I had a great call last night with longtime friend and peer Joe Ferrara - and as always, he got my wheels turning.

I am putting this out on the wire (blog-o-sphere) and hope for any and all ideas & suggestions on proven marketing & PR advice for our new message.

Let’s put all the B.S. aside, all the disgruntled comments from the traditional real estate folks and let’s just talk basics.

At CondoDomain.com we have a pretty unbelievable story to tell.  No we are not curing cancer or saving the planet (I wish I was…but unfortunately I am smack-dab in the middle of the real estate world right now), but the point being is that we are offering a surreal “Too good to be true” kind of product & service.

The Basics:

1.  CondoDomain is a real estate broker, just like RE/MAX, Century 21, Coldwell Banker or any other real estate brand out there. We all claim to be better than one another or have more market share, etc, but bottom line is that we are no different than then mega-brands.  The point here is that any agent that works for one of these firms is just a “person” and that “person” is whom creates the value in the transaction.  So no matter if you are working with RE/MAX or CondoDomain - the better agent will create more value for you - and therefore provide a better service and get you a better deal.  Agree?

2.  Niche:  As a firm we specialize in 1 vertical.  We ONLY work with buyers and we concentrate on urban living which mainly consists of condominiums.  Buying a condominium is different than buying a single family home, that being said, we feel we have an advantage as our ‘agents’ deal with this all day long.  Also, ONLY working with BUYERS allows our “agents” to concentrate on solely that.  Most traditional real estate agents spend the majority of their time marketing themselves to drum up clients/business.  After they get a new client (buyer or a seller) they need to adjust their perspective on how they are going to help them (i.e.  market a new listing or help them find a new home).  At CondoDomain we just work with buyers, 100% of the time, so all we do is tour properties all week long and see up to 10X more listing than the average “top real agent”.  I would put this way up on the list as a major advantage for CondoDomain to serve you as a buyer’s agent, no?

3. Business model:  Without drilling into details or boring you with how our internal systems work, our business model ‘affords’ our team members/agent to work with buyers for a set flat fee.  When we started this business it did not make sense to us that if we helped a buyer buy a home and they spent more money, we got paid more?  Actually, our exact opinion was this is “ass backwards”.  As a buyer’s agent aren’t we supposed to try and help our buyers get the new home or condo for the lowest price possible?  Therefore we implemented the “flat fee”.

Because of how the traditional real estate model is set up & for still operating, we are still compensated a commission based on the percentage of the sales price.  So we simple accept the commission at the closing, subtract our fee due to the firm (which is the exact same for every transaction) and then cut the remainder of the commission back to our client.  Sound fair?

Summary:

To date we have had VERY FEW thought-out rebuttals to our business model.  Most traditionalists classify us as a “discounter” and just write hateful things to us about the model - whatever!    Does anyone out there who does not agree with our model have a “thought out” response to a flat fee based buyers agency?

Our goal as a company, beyond the obvious of helping buyers, is NOT to ruin the real estate industry, but rather provide a very sensible and viable option to consumers.

So…

We are operating a company called CondoDomain that provides a dominant web-based information portal that includes more ‘local’ RE data on one site than any other single source.  We have local real estate agents whom we believe are some of the very best in the industry for calculated reasons.  And we work with every single one of our clients for the exact same set fee and REFUND them back any remainder of the commission.

My guess is that if we were lucky enough to tell every buyer in our market about our business model, 8 out of 10 people would choose us.  So….HOW DO WE TELL OUR AWESOME STORY?

More information visit our website @ www.CondoDomain.com

Whoa! What is going on out there in this real estate world this month?  Hot off the press today some major movement in the discount real estate brokerage business, & mainstream real estate media verticals.

Redfin - which announced a few weeks ago to layoff a big % of their staff has rolled out another adjustment to their offering plan for buyers and sellers in the 8 markets that they serve.  Today they announce: Redfin Upgrades Online Brokerage Service on their very nicely new fresh designed website.  Great work guys.  Looking sharp!

Zillow - (via the Sellius Blog and Inman News ) announced that the real estate media company Zillow has chosen to give up all but two of its state real estate broker licenses as a cost cutting measure. (It kept Washington and Texas). On October 17, 2008, Zillow CEO Rich Barton publicly announced the layoff of 25% of its workforce.)

Zip Realty - Zip Realty adds 551 real estate agents in an aggressive recruting effort and boosts sales.  ZipRealty Inc. managed to trim third-quarter losses to $1.7 million as the company added 551 agents and took advantage of continued turnover of foreclosed properties to achieve double-digit growth in sales and revenue from a year ago.

From the street level it looks like all these major movements to innovate this stale traditional industry is taking a beating because of nationwide market declines.  In short, Redfin tacks on is giving less commission rebates back but offering up more services and dedicated time to their clients.  Zip is taking the old old OLD tactic of add more agents and get more deals - yikes.   And Zillow who really stands separate from the pack as an ad based business is a clear impression that there is less $$$ being spent in the industry at this current time.  Will all these companies survive … absolutely, and we are a big fan of all of them.

CondoDomain.com - (A little “self love”) -  Little’ole CondoDomain.com still sits quiet in the pack (even though we are yelling as loud as we can)  on the sidelines.  Bootstrapped to the max, operating in 4 markets (soon to be 6 this week), our mini-Redfin web-based buyers brokerage business model is trending in the opposite direction.  Possiblly hte markets we are in?  Maybe our cheap flimzy business cards and marketing material?  Who knows, but we are excited to be growing in a time like this.  A little birdie told me that San Diego & Washington DC will have a CondoDomain website & buyers brokerage business model there veryyyyyy soon.

(Photo above:  Museum Tower, Dallas TX)

Calling all Real Estate Developers and Sales & Marketing firms:  Spruce up your new condo development on the leading condominium website - CondoDomain.com.

We have done our very best job to keep our website up-to-date with the most current information and multi-media, but we can never do the job of your marketing team.

The marketing team just updated their project - Museum Tower - in Dallas, TX and it looks so much better than the job we did.  Check out the new gorgeous renderings and updated photos, and we are posting their video soon too!

Developers/Marketing Firms: Remember posting your condominium development on our website is 100% free. We take pride in having the most informative urban real estate website out there….so if you are on our site, please contact us to update it.  If you don’t see your new condo development on the site - please go ahead and add it for free!.

Live in 4 cities:  Atlanta Condos | Boston Condos | Charlotte Condos | Dallas Condos

Coming Soon:  Baltimore Condos | DC Condos | Philadelphia Condos | San Diego Condos

Today I walked into my office and got a Gtalk message from one of my best friends who now lives in Geneva, Switzerland as a Money Broker.   The title - “Dude check this out!  Right up your alley here…”

The link, a Bloomberg article titled: New York Condo Buyers Wary of McCain Get Obama-Loss Loophole

In short, the article states that a New York condo buyer has put in an offer to purchase the $4.16M condo that basically will be NULL and VOID if Barack Obama is NOT elected president.

Noted in the article:

“Call it the Obama contingency. Buyers at the building called +aRt will be released from their purchase contract “no questions asked” should the Democratic candidate lose to John McCain on Nov. 4, said Erik Ekstein, president of Ekstein Development”

“We’ve been trying to move some of our product and one of the major stumbling blocks has been political,” Ekstein said. “This being New York, people are looking forward to his taking office,” he said of Obama.

“Some would-be buyers visited the building, discussed financing, and then said they feared McCain, Ekstein said. Victory by the Republican will trigger the escape hatch for anyone who signs a sales agreement before then.”

No sales have been made yet, but I would agree with Morrison that this could ‘Only happen in NY’.

Read the rest of the article here.

Search all NY Condos

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