LEAP Real Estate Systems

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - July 23, 2008 - LeapRE, the creators of productivity and marketing technology solutions for top performing agents, announced the release of DotHome while exhibiting at the Inman Connect trade show in San Francisco. LeapRE is a Bronze Sponsor of the conference and will be demonstrating the DotHome solution there.DotHome is an advanced marketing platform that allows agents and brokers to make better decisions about their advertising dollars, resulting in significant cost savings.

DotHome distributes listings automatically to all the popular online marketing venues including Craigslist, Zillow, Trulia, and Google Base, and will add syndication, result reporting, and quality assurance to any advertising venue its users request. DotHome supports custom web, HTML (for sites such as Craigslist) and mobile (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) skins, so any design professional can create new DotHome designs for their clients, while leveraging all display capabilities of the DotHome platform. DotHome can also automatically upgrade online venues to featured products and distribute content to print venues such as local newspapers and signage providers.

The most important feature of DotHome is its patent pending ability to correlate the reach, frequency, and impressions of advertising to real showing activity, relieving agents and brokers from the task of collecting lead data for each individual showing. DotHome accomplishes this through a complex non-linear regression mathematical model. The resulting value is called Listing AdPower. Listing AdPower tells an agent or brokerage how effective their marketing is at generating showings, and ultimately the return on their marketing investment. Using this feature, agents and brokerages can setup advertising programs to automatically rotate advertising venues, and even mix photos for individual listings, all while staying within a monthly or annual budget.DotHome is licensed in three different models: Free, Plus and Professional.

LEAP Real Estate Systems, LLC, is an innovative Chicago-based technology company specializing in powerful solutions for top performing real estate agents and brokerages.  Products and services include: LeapRE Software (www.leapre.com), PeekaCity (www.peekacity.com), Best Floorplans(www.bestfloorplans.com), Photo Floorplan, and DotHome (www.dothome.info). 

.home and DotHome are service marks of LEAP Real Estate Systems, LLC. Listing AdPower is a trademark of LEAP Real Estate Systems, LLC. LeapRE is a trademark of LEAP Real Estate Systems, LLC. 

Designated trademarks and brands are property of their respected owners.For further information about LeapRE, please contact Krista Hartman at (888) 810-7118 x251, or khartman@leapre.com.

Working with hundreds of top-performing agents in Chicago I have seen some amazing marketers.  Real estate is obviously a marketing business.  Following are my conclusions about what I have seen distinguish some top-performing agents from their competitors. Consistency – Regular, regimented, planned programs are the only type that work.  A marketing campaign is never going to flash up in your face and demand to get done.  Most agents have their conceptual list or calendar of marketing activities, but in between showings, closings, listing presentations, and day-to-day emergencies the marketing is never any moment’s top priority.How to do it: Schedule tasks and work on a regimented schedule.  Manage priorities by importance and not by urgency alone.  Remain committed to the schedule as well, in lieu of the ever present temptation to procrastinate.  Creativity - Successful marketing is all about doing what others aren’t.  Whether a clever email campaign, a social networking push, or fancy marketing tools, you need to find ways that cause you to stand out amongst the thousands of other realtors in your area. Your listings need to stand out against the hundreds of thousands of listings on the market at any given time.  Online marketing devices and tools such as our interactive maps, photo floor plans, furniture planners and neighborhood info keep individuals viewing individual listings longer and can promote a “buy-in” or  the start of an emotional attachment to any listing you’re marketing.How to do it: Read-research-experiment with free trials among the available innovative marketing products. Try new gimmicks and venues.  If they work, keep them. If they don’t, lose them.  Track where buyers are finding your listings.  Ask for multiple opinions about what pieces are appealing/working and which aren’t.Attention to detail – The most successful marketers are great detail people or have great detail people working for them.  The difference between a powerful, appealing marketing piece and a run of the mill marketing piece isn’t great.  Smooth, clean layouts with rich content, high quality digital images, pleasing color palates and of course NO typos or spelling errors will get results.How to do it:  Multiple eyes and high standards.  I know I am not a details person, thus before this article goes “live” I will have it reviewed by one are more of my team members, who are far better with details than I am.

PeekaCity in continuing to deliver  the freshest neighborhood mapping technologies has recently implemented Google’s Streetview.  This will have already taken affect for the many PeekaCity users webpages using the PeekaCity API (sign up here).  People can now click a link to view the property as if driving by.  They can zoom in for detail and drive up and down the street virtually to check out the neighboring houses and the neighbohood.

Simply click on the amenity or property and select “Open” next to the “Streetview” tag.

This will bring up the StreetView display of the selected object.  You can navigate around the area by using your mouse within the display.

If the “Streetview” tag is missing then it is not yet available in that area.  You can also click the “Streetview” button to display (via a blue outline) what areas have “Streetview” available.

The ever-increasing prevalence of online marketing for real estate has users having to jump through some hoops to get the most of the available resources.  LEAP has some exciting innovations for web syndication in the works, by means of our DotHome product.

I recently undertook a project for one of our long-term users, Michael Rosenblum with his assistant Alicia De La Pena to get PeekaCity implemented everywhere they could in their online marketing.  Here is what we got:

E-Campaigns:

Michael and Alicia are impressively steady email marketers, sending out notices of their litings by means of a “Residence study” notification.  Alicia and I were able to include a link out to an interactive amenity map.  By using LEAP’s e-campaign template functions all she has to do is type in the address of the property as she would like it accessed through PeekaCity and it automatically sends with the map linked. 

To view the e-campaign with the map linked go to http://www.leapre.com/v3-3/email/emaildisplay.asp?message_extid=C:709

There is a link that says “To view an interactive map of this neighborhood click here.”
MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/michaelrosenblumpresents

MySpace in its efforts to be very open for its users proved very rewarding.  While we were unable to use inline frames as would have been ideal due to site restrictions, we were able to link out to interactive PeekaCity maps from many places.  Each neighborhood and listing holds a “For more information about this neighborhood click here” link.  This implements a very rudimentary a href to link to a PeekaCity map locked down to the listing.  The format for the link is:

<a href=”http://www.peekacity.com/Frame.aspx?PCID=(A code assigned to Michael when he signed up for PeekaCity)&address=(Address as searched in PeekaCity)”> (Linked text) </a>

 Michael also invites his MySpace users to browse PeekaCity themselves by linking to us from a logo.  To do the same just paste the following code into your pages:

<a href=”http://www.peekacity.com/salesinfo.aspx?section=Splash&topic=Splash” mce_href=”http://www.peekacity.com/salesinfo.aspx?section=Splash&topic=Splash”><img width=”163″ height=”99″  src=”http://www.peekacity.com/images/peekacity-logo.gif” mce_src=”http://www.peekacity.com/images/peekacity-logo.gif”></a>

ActiveRain:

http://activerain.com/blogs/michaelrosenblumpresents

Michael is an active blogger on this popular real estate blog.  We were able to add PeekaCity in a very slick manner to several of his posts.  Using simple inline frame coding, we were able to place PeekaCity interactively within each blog entry.  People viewing his blog can print out a PeekaCity Neighborhood Report   in a versatile PDF for any of the listings, with Michaels name and contact info.

 To implement this we included the following code:

<table border=”0″ width=”100%”>

                        <tr>

                                    <td>

                                    <iframe name=”I1″ src=” http://www.peekacity.com/frame.aspx?PCID=245c795f-3318-4ac0-9321-746b2324668a&home=1918%20S%20Michigan%20Ave,%20Chicago,%20IL,%2060616″ height=”700″ width=”770″>

                                    Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames.

                                    </iframe>

                              </td>

                        </tr>

</table>

MLS:

Michael has used LEAP technologies to get a bit more mileage of the MLS.  Since the MLS only has a field for a virtual tour.  Alicia used our DotHome product to spawn a “virtual tour plus”.  Along with the virtual tour now MLS browsers can access interactive PeekaCity Amenity maps and community information. Click here to see how that appears in the MLS. Users could also include: Photos, Property Details, Floorplans, Video tours, and brochures.

With a little creativity and effort it is very possible to make your listings pop out to users.  As an old marketing adage goes, “Successful marketing is all about doing what others aren’t”

In my year of experience dealing with top producing agents. I have seen a lot of things that work well for agents and a lot of things that don’t. It seems every real estate agent and every team of realtors has their own ways and means of making things work.

I often see realtors essentially throwing money away by providing outdated computers for their assistants. Upgrading your system’s memory can be one of the biggest returns on investment you make this year. Lets do the math:

Increased multi-tasking, heavier reliance on computer based communication, and the new versions of standard programs assistants use daily (Word 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and more complicated web applications) require more system resources and many office systems can hardly keep up.

Let us assume a slow system decreases an assistant’s efficiency by 15%. (In many cases, this is a modest estimate). Also let us assume the average real estate assistant working in Chicago makes $30-40k. That translates to $4.5 – 6k of inefficiency per year. Generally a system RAM upgrade can be purchased for between $65-150. An onsite installation and system upgrade usually takes between 1-2 hours. So the total would generally run $160-$340. According to the math from above it should take only 13 to 28 calendar days to recover your investment.

Don’t take my word for it. You can see for yourself:

1. Go to your office/assistant’s computer.
2. Open up Internet Explorer
3. Open Word
4. Open Excel
5. Open Outlook

Now perform the same tasks on your computer at home.

Do you see the delay with your assistance computer?

To check your computer’s memory directly you can [in Windows XP and Vista]:

1. Right click on the “My Computer” icon from your start menu, desktop, or file explorer.
2. Click “Properties”
3. Under the “System” heading on the following page you will see a number for memory or RAM. This generally ranges from 384 MB- 4Gig. (4 Gigabytes of data is approximately 10 times as much as memory as 384 MB)

If your office computer is running anything less than 1Gig I would seriously consider getting a ram upgrade to save both you and your assistant time, and you ALOT of money.

Have you noticed that when you go to use Outlook on another computer, the categories are not present? This is especially a problem with a group Outlook setup for Real Estate agents. Most agent group configurations (agents with assistants or teams) have specific categories such as Active Listings, Pending Listings, Active Buyers, Pending Buyers, and Agents. With the LEAP system, we’ll automatically synchronize your categories across your workgroup to make sure your contracts and categories stay organized.

If you are a bit technical, here are the details on how to do it yourself!

You can save your custom Outlook categories by exporting a registry key:  

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Categories

Right click on the Categories folder and choose Export. To restore it double click the *.reg.Note that the key does not exist until you create a custom category.

If you need some assistance, we can remotly access your computer and help you. To learn more call us at 888.810.7118.

LEAPre offers a number of mobile synchronization solutions for Realtors(R) including Blackberrys, Treos, and Windows Mobile devices. Imagine having your calendar, listings, contacts, tasks, and email wirelessly synchronize with your mailbox. This is an ideal system for top producing agents with assistants or agents with teams.  While all of these devices synchronize with our Exchange servers, some devices work better than others. Our current recommendation is either a Windows Mobile device or Blackberry. Treos are great devices but their contact management systems don’t work as well with Exchange/Outlook as the Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. Additionally, if you have Sprint, the Treo will have numerous synchronization problems. LEAPre also supplies software to synchronize tasks, calendar, contacts, and mailboxes on your team. Have you noticed that only one Treo or Blackberry device can be synchronized with an Exchange mailbox? With our software we can synchronize across mailboxes. Note: you can connect as many Windows Mobile devices to a single mailbox as your wish, but you can only have one Blackberry and Treo device each, not two Blackberrys or two Treos.  To learn more about our Exchange and synchronization solutions for top producing agent with assistant or teams, please contact us at sales@leapre.com or call us at 888.810.7118.

PeekaCity wiki is now available to all users.  All you need to do is ask!

PeekaCity wiki allows users to add amenities as well as edit and comment on existing amenities and neighborhood descriptions.  Just email Craig at csparling@leapre.com and he will set your account up for wiki access and send you a simple writeup of how to make the changes.

We released LEAP 3.5 beta version today. It has a number of features that will improve LEAP including stronger development support, improved activity reporting, and tighter integration with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook. If you are interested in joining the version 3.5 beta, please let us know. The beta will last for approximately two weeks.