Taking it to the streets -- more on mobile

The Breakaway Brokerage: Part 5

BY INMAN NEWS, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013.

Inman News®

Joel Burslem

By JOEL BURSLEM

The first part of this postcovered the strategic opportunities for brokers to reach out to mobile users. We talked about the types of mobile users, where they sit in the funnel, and gave some broad ideas for how and where to engage them.

This week, I want to get more tactical and offer tangible ways to focus your mobile efforts in three main areas: the mobile Web, native applications and mobile marketing.

Mobile Web

Every broker should be optimizing their site for mobile browsers. After a few years spent monitoring analytics accounts for major brokerages around the country, one thing is clear: Mobile Web traffic -- those visitors coming to broker websites from smartphone or tablet devices -- has steadily marched upwards. I suspect your numbers are no different.

Scratching below the surface, what's also interesting is where that traffic is heading. Here's a hint: It's probably not your home page.

Tame your cloud storage services

Attachments.me connects Gmail to Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and Box

BY TOM FLANAGAN, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013. Inman News®

Cloud storage image via Shutterstock.

Cloud storage services are fantastic. They enable us to access our files across multiple devices and increase our productivity. But managing different cloud storage services independently can be frustrating. Like many real estate pros, I have files stored in Dropbox and Google Drive. If I want to share photos from my Dropbox account with a client or colleague, the task has to be executed via Dropbox. In other words, I have to launch Dropbox and share the photos from the application. The more cloud storage services I utilize, the more challenging streamlining my data becomes. Attachments.me is an app that connects Gmail with Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and Box. The app makes it super easy to search and share attachments from these cloud storage services directly through Gmail.

9 ways to better market your properties

Hot tips from Real Estate Connect NYC

BY BERNICE ROSS, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2013.

Inman News®

Homes for sale image via Shutterstock.

Every Real Estate Connect conference is packed with plenty of hot tips, strategies and new apps. Here's a quick rundown of some of the coolest apps and strategies from last month's Real Estate Connect in New York City. Which of these will you implement in your business?

1. Is your website responsive?

The latest programming languages allow your website to automatically adjust to the size of the screen on which the site is being viewed (i.e., be "responsive). The software detects the device your Web visitor is using and then automatically adjusts to fit the screen. If you are considering a new website, WordPress is one of the most widely used platforms for achieving this goal.

Redfin expands to 5 new markets

Move grows website listings by 14 percent

BY INMAN NEWS, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013.

Inman News®

Seattle-based online brokerage Redfin has expanded to five new markets, boosting the number of listings on its site by 14 percent, the company announced today.

The new markets are Houston; New York City's Bronx borough; Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina; and the state of Delaware. The move extends Redfin's services to a total of 21 major markets and grows its reach by nearly 10 million new people -- a 10 percent increase in audience size, the company said.

"For Redfin, this expansion demonstrates a fundamental broadening of our business model," said Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO, in a statement. "A few years ago, the company's service was viable only in a handful of coastal cities with the country's highest home prices. As Redfin has developed new economies of scale, we have actually improved the quality of service while lowering costs, allowing us to bring new markets to profits quickly."

Your paperless office may soon be printing plastic

Only time will tell if 3-D printing has real estate applications

BY GAHLORD DEWALD, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013.

Inman News®

The Makerbot Replicator 2 Desktop 3-D Printer. Image via Makerbot.com

It seems like 2013 is gearing up to be the year of 3-D printing among the tech set. Let's spend a few minutes looking at this technology -- also known as "additive manufacturing" -- and what sort of impact it might have.
3-D printing technology enables you to make a physical object out of plastic from a computer file. It is to industrial design what the ink jet printer is to graphic design.
So, in the same way that you might use an ink jet printer to print off a couple of brochures or sell sheets or other business collateral, you might use a 3-D printer to "print" off an object -- a keychain fob, an action figure, a spare plastic part for something, and so on.
First off, let's be very clear and honest: 3-D printing is extremely cool, but it's also a long way from mainstream. There are significant constraints on what this technology can do today.

The printers build up objects a layer at a time, which are limited in size and also in complexity or "resolution." The resulting objects are prone to deformities and defects, and will often require some degree of hand finishing to be considered of decent quality.

But in the same way that the capabilities of desktop printers have advanced radically, I suspect that 3-D printing will also improve rapidly should a market become apparent. What we see today with hobbyist 3-D printing will morph into something more polished and useful over time.
Let's examine the technology in terms of time frame.

6 ways to increase your chances of being audited

Real Estate Tax Talk

BY STEPHEN FISHMAN, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2013.

Inman News®

Audit image via Shutterstock.

Now that we've entered the tax filing season, many taxpayers' thoughts naturally turn to the subject of IRS audits. What are the chances you'll be audited by the IRS? It depends.

The overall audit rate is low. In 2012 only 0.94 percent of all individual taxpayers with incomes under $200,000 were audited. Taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 to $1 million were audited at a 3.7 percent rate.

LPS to review three years of mortgage documents

$120.6M settlement resolves 'robo-signing' allegations by 46 states

BY INMAN NEWS, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2013.

Inman News®

Robotic hand image via Shutterstock.

Lender Processing Services Inc. has agreed to pay more than $120 million and review three years of documents to settle allegations that the company "robo-signed" and otherwise improperly handled mortgage documents that LPS and its subsidiaries handled for loan servicers in foreclosure proceedings.

The $120.6 million settlement with attorneys general of 46 states and Washington, D.C. requires that LPS review documents executed between Jan. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2010 to determine whether any need to be re-executed or corrected. For the next three years, LPS will be required to provide the attorneys general with quarterly reports of the company's remediation efforts.

"Today we've taken another step forward to hold accountable the many players in the marketplace who contributed to the foreclosure crisis," said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan in a statement Thursday. "LPS and its subsidiaries became a sort of document factory, literally rubber stamping thousands of foreclosures with no regard for fairness and accuracy in the process."