Real Estate Industry Watch » Interviews

Carolyn Capalbo – The Real Story

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:24:31 +0000

Author’s Note: In keeping with our practice of interviewing interesting real estate industry personalities, Carolyn Capalbo is a REALTOR in Northern Virginia. But she is not the ONLY Carolyn Capalbo in the United States. (There are 4.) One of them is the mother of Ashley Dupree (the infamous “escort” of Eliot Spitzer). Almost instantly, everyone who Googled Carolyn Capalbo saw images of women in bikinis and newspaper articles about the affair. She now has the unenviable task of regaining her image so that she is comfortable having potential clients search for her name.

We caught up with Carolyn at an industry seminar and interviewed her for Real Estate Industry Watch.

EB: Hi Carolyn, you have started a bit of “buzz” in the real estate community as you work to reclaim your name when another “Carolyn Capalbo” became infamous. How is it going so far?

Carolyn Capalbo: The outpouring of support from the Realtor community has been amazing. Agents that I have not met personally have reached out to me and taken time out of their busy schedules to help me reclaim my name. It has been very heartwarming and humbling experience.

EB: Most REALTORS cannot imagine having their name overrun as you did. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like?

Carolyn Capalbo: When the story first broke, I really did not recognize the long term impact that this could have. I thought that the other Carolyn would enjoy her 15 minutes of fame and be out of the limelight once the story died down. I also was amazed that the mother of this girl would garner so much attention. The initial burst of phone calls surprised me. Reporters were calling me directly looking for information regarding Ashley. Reporters were also contacting my Broker’s office looking for information. My own buyer’s agents asked me if I had another child from a previous relationship. My children were also questioned at school if they had an older sister or half sister. What I didn’t recognize was the long term retention of this information via the search engines. Pictures of me were merged into the pictures of the other Carolyn Capalbo. Since our basic coloring is the same, even I can understand why some people might think that we are one and the same person. I also know that I can’t control the images out there on line. It is frustrating to not have control over your image.

EB: Tell us a little bit about the REAL Carolyn Capalbo.

Carolyn Capalbo: My motto is Service, Knowledge, and Integrity. I am very driven to offer my customers the highest level of service, expertise and excellence. Family is extremely important to me. I recently celebrated my 20th Wedding anniversary and am a very proud Mom of 3 amazing children (triplets). While being a Realtor, we have to be out there in the public; however, I have a very private side that I also enjoy. I love the water and love to be out on a sailboat as often as possible. I love to spend as much time with my family as possible.

EB: How did you get into the real estate business?

Carolyn Capalbo: I have always been excited about real estate. Timing was everything for me, my husband served over 20 years in the US Army. We move frequently and I stayed home full time to raise my children. On his final tour, we relocated to the Washington DC Metropolitan area and I re-entered the workplace. I utilized my background in economics and worked for a large bank in the area. When my husband retired and embarked on a second career, it was time for me to follow my dream and give real estate a try. My first full year in real estate I closed 64 transaction sides and knew that this was my calling!

EB: So now for some fun..what are your predictions for the top finishers in the contest? Who do you think will end up at the top?

Carolyn Capalbo: At this moment in time, when you Google my name, Lisa Udy, has the second position. But it is still early in the contest!

I am thrilled and grateful that Morgan Carey and Real Estate Webmasters has taken up my cause. I appreciate your support and generous donation of your time and prizes for my cause as well. Who do you think will win?

EB: (grin) As long as the winners are REALTORS who are helping you get your name back, we all win. Final Question. What have you learned from this experience that you would pass on to other REALTORs?

Carolyn Capalbo: You can’t control what is out there on line. The implications could be both positive or negative depending upon the situation. While I can’t remove the images of the other Carolyn Capalbo hanging out in a bikini on the beach, I can blog and provide testimonial proof that we are not one and the same. If this happens to you, get the word out that you are not one and the same person.

I still have no way to quantify how many potential clients have not called me because of that initial bikini impression. I believe that I must work harder to get past the on-line images.

Carolyn – we wish you the best in your business and efforts.

Randy Standard from VoicePad -an interview

admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:44:18 +0000

Interviewer’s Note: When we interview people for REIW, we like to find interesting people with interesting and often unique views on the real estate industry. These are people that you would love to talk shop with over lunch and people who challenge your thinking about our industry. Randy Standard is one of those people.

He founded VoicePad – a unique integrated voice response system that has grown rapidly in the real estate industry, but that is not what sets him apart from others. What sets him apart is his unique perspective on the real estate consumer and how they want to do business. Enjoy!

Q: Tell folks a little bit about yourself and how you came to start
VoicePad?

A: My mobile Telephony career start in 1985 with a recently organized company called Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems. We were building this “new animal” called a cellular telephone system in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas. We launched service with 6 analog towers in San Antonio thinking this was all we would ever need:) The experience was extremely entrepreneurial for a 100 year old phone company. What was most interesting about the technology was knowing how it was going to affect everyone and how they connected to others…they just didn’t know it yet. Our first customers were Physicians, Attorneys, and….”bookies” (people who needed to be connected…and could afford a $2500 mobile phone and 40 cents per minute for the privilege of secure mobile communication).

Over a 20 year career in the wireless industry, I was transferred 9 times. This meant I became intimately involved with the experience of being a motivated home buyer. I purchased my first home in 1988. It was 1500 square feet and $69,000. The interest rate was north of 14% on the mortgage. My Realtor had a conflict on the day when she was to take me to look at houses. She reached into her trunk and shoved a 10 pound MLS book into my chest. She said if I told anyone that she had given the MLS book to me…she’d have to kill me. That day, as I drove neighborhoods of interest, I felt empowered as I had every listing at my fingertips. As I look back, that seemed to be the original “spark” that all home buyers should have property information as part of their home search. 12 years later, I had the opportunity to build such a product.

Q: How is Voice Pad different from the old fashioned “hotline”.

A: First of all, I have a lot of respect for the original providers of “hotline services,” and even more respect for the agents that “endured” the manual nature of keeping information up-to-date on these systems. At VoicePad, we aspired to advance IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology in several ways: First, we needed to eliminate the need for the agent to record individual property presentations with a high-quality automated speech platform that provided up-to-date information in multiple languages from any phone. Next, we had to integrate the service with updating listing data to provide accurate information on ALL properties…not just some. Finally, we had to develop a friendly web interface for agents to manage the leads generated from the system as well as add unique property features and content to their property presentations. VoicePad is really more of a mobile search solution as opposed to a “hotline” solution.

Q: Where do you see the real estate industry going in how it interacts
with the consumer?

A: Over the past 15 years or so, the real estate industry has “invited” the consumer on-line to look online images of homes. The problem was that the consumer stayed anonymous on the web. This created the need for additional products and strategies to extract the identity of these potential home buyers. One day soon, we’ll look back on this “experiment” with the web search as not entirely positive for industry professionals. Mobile search will improve the opportunities for success. More importantly, it will be “safe” to get in a car and drive neighborhoods again.

Q: How is this type of solution for the phone different than browsing
for listings online?

A:The telephone is an opt-out environment (i.e caller id delivery). The web is an opt-in environment that keeps the buyer’s identity confidential. Opt-out medias simply generate more leads…it’s just math. Yes, the U.S. consumer is “going mobile,” but with only 32% of U.S. mobile subscribers base having the requisite mobile broadband subscription to render a web page on their phone, it’s just a little early to count on an iphone application to change the real estate industry. In 7 years, the number will be just 50%. Look for mobile technologies that (1) can reach all mobile subscribers and (2) use a solution that delivers potential buyer’s identity without having to ask for it. VoicePad can search any active listing from any telephone and deliver leads on every search. That makes VoicePad pretty unique.

Q: Last question, if you had to start your business over again, what is
the biggest thing that you would do differently? and why?

A: Most new technology companies fail due to mistiming the market which results in insufficient revenues to maintain operations. We got lucky in that our market timing was spot-on. We “gutted” this out as a start-up, used our own money and didn’t take (available) venture capital funding. Today, the company has no debt, owns it’s intellectual property and has been averaging 100%+ year over year growth on average for the last 4 years. So, we are very fortunate and I really wouldn’t do anything differently.

Harris Real Estate University – Tim and Julie Harris

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:08:44 +0000

Interviewers note: I really enjoy meeting new people and the fun part of the real estate business is that there are all sorts of fun people to meet. One of the more fun people that I have met has been Tim Harris of Harris Real Estate University. Tim is bigger than life, and far more energetic.

Over the weeks since we first talked, I have grown to appreciate his zest for business and his passion for coaching. In a world of folks who do not walk the talk, Tim and Julie Harris do. Here’s a little information about them along with my interview.

Harris Real Estate University

Founded by: Tim and Julie Harris

Purpose: Educate REALTORS on the best techniques and skills of selling in today’s market.

They now reside in Las Vegas and in Laguna Beach California where they moved from their days as RE/MAX REALTORS in Ohio.

REIW: Hi Tim and Julie, what prompted you and your wife to go from selling real estate into coaching? They are two really different businesses and there had to be a reason behind it.

Tim and Julie Harris: We were speaking at a large, national convention. After we were done presenting, a couple Realtors cornered us, asked if we’d consider coaching them. To be honest, up until that point, we had never considered coaching. We had only written our book, ’0 to 10 Million In One Year’, and were not really looking to do much more in the real estate education arena. We accepted the challenge of coaching those initial agents and then that grew to a handful, then dozens, then hundreds. Now, over 10 years has passed, and it’s grown into the thousands.

Let’s be clear about this, though. In no way did we set out to become the largest online coaching organization. No one is more surprised than we are!!

REIW: Your coaching company has grown tremendously in the last couple of years, if you can point to one specific thing as a cause for your success what would it be?

Tim and Julie Harris: Well, not so different than the first answer, really. The honest answer is: luck and being in the right place at the right time. We had to learn to do short sales as a necessity when we sold homes in Ohio. When we predicted the market was headed for a nose dive in 2007, we recognized that eventually, short sales would go from the ‘fringe’ of real estate into the mainstream. So back in 2007, we offered a free short sale teleseminar, and at the time that was to mostly KW agents. In retrospect, back then, the #1 question then was, ‘what the heck is a short sale?’. Now everyone knows what a short sale is. If you’re asking how we grew so fast…it was being in the right place at the right time, lots of stupid luck, and the recognition that the market was changing.

Now, in addition the Short Sale class, one of our most popular courses is the REO program, followed by our Agent Technology Program.

REIW: With every success comes a failure or two ( or three or ten!). What was your biggest failure and how are you working to overcome it?

Tim and Julie Harris: Growing as fast as we did. We seem to be crashing a server every 90 days or so. We’ve had the usual growth related staffing issues. When you go from hundreds of students to thousands, Customer Service becomes the necessary focus.

REIW:Due to the market conditions, short sales seem to be everywhere. It was not a phrease that anyone even Googled two years ago and now everyone is. What (besides your training should a real estate agent do to take advantage of this?

Tim and Julie Harris: The new Treasury guidelines, without a doubt make short sales the preferred tool in the toolbox that the Obama administration is using to end the foreclosure crisis. What should an agent do now? Accept that the market of the moment (to steal a line from Gary Keller), understand that your real estate seller clients, if you’re in most of the country, are upside down in their homes. Their best option if they have to sell is to do a short sale, vs. having to deal with the foreclosure process. We heard a report just today that 12% of all sales in the US were short sales. This is a staggering number. We expect it to grow to 20 or 30% by the end of this year. Learn the right way to do short sales and learn it immediately. Understand also that this education is a moving target, with the laws and guidelines and practices change daily. Oh yeah…consider earning your HREU, CDPD Distressed Property Designation!

REIW: Many agents complain that short sales are tough (and they are right!) I have atched them struggle with ever changing information and banks not being able to get timely decisions back to them. Do you see this getting resolved soon and what are some steps for agents to take in resolving it?

Tim and Julie Harris: That very question is the essence of why we’re calling 2010 the Year of the Short Sale. In late 2009, the Treasury Dept came out with new guidelines which will transform and streamline the Short Sale process. We choose to be cautiously optimistic about how fast the banks will adapt to these guidelines vs being skeptical. The dramatic changes include: the banks will respond within 10 days, commissions will not be negotiable as long as they are not over 6%. When in full effect, the banks will be pre-approving homes for short sales. They’ll already have collected the documentation, established a list price, and then assign a short sale listing to agents. This will be similar to the current REO process. Consider the fact that the total % of short sales could grow to 20 or 30%, you’re talking about over a million short sales for 2010. That’s a lot of home owners that agents should help and 10s of millions in commission dollars out there for agents to earn.

REIW:Last shot is yours, Tim… looking back on your business and looking forward to the future of real estate coaching, training, and education, where do you see the business in 5 years?

Tim and Julie Harris: 100% web-based, no question about it. When we look at our newest students, they are wired completely different than the agents they’re replacing. They want education and training delivered when they want it and how they want it. Obviously, there will be education in the form of webinars, videos, and whatever might come next. Whatever that form is, if it puts us in a place where we can better serve our students, you can count on us either adapting or innovating to meet their needs.

It’s the Realtors that join us in adapting and innovating to what home owners demand and what home buyers demand who will be the new top producers across the country. From our perspective, it’s been interesting to watch as the agents who quickly adapt to market shifts have displaced agents who have been top producers for years and years. We have students who, in the height of the boom, were struggling to sell 10 or 12 homes per year. Those same agents, after learning to do short sales and sell REOs, are now selling more than 100 homes per year. The ability to adapt and innovate has launched them into top producer status. It’s truly our honor to coach so many agents…we blush at the praise they often bestow upon us. The simple fact is that it’s the AGENTS who are making the difference. Agents who have learned how to be of service, and who have become the ‘Hope for Homeowners’. These agents have seized the opportunity to learn the skills that this market requires. It’s those agents who motivate US every day.

GMAC Real Estate combines with Real Living

Wayne — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:52:19 +0000

We now know what the new brand will be for GMAC Real Estate. GMAC Realtors received an email today from Graham Badun (CEO of Brookfield) saying that Brookfield Asset Management, who bought GMAC Real Estate about a year ago, has now acquired the Real Living Franchise. Additionally, the email stated that GMAC Real Estate would be re-branded to Real Living.

Badun indicated that Real Living offered the branding needed to provide a strong future for the company.

Harley Rouda, Jr., president of Real Living, will be the new president of the combined company.

Howard Brinton – An Interview I wish we had done.

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:54:58 +0000

While this is not an interview per se, it is a tribute to a good man and a great person in our industry. Howard Brinton announced that due to his failing health, he is closing down the “Star Power” business that he has operated effective October 1, 2009. Although I never had the chance to meet Howard, he remains one of the most influential and intriguing teachers and sharers of marketing insight in the real estate industry over the last 30 years.

Simply put, there are few things that I regret not doing. I am checking off my “bucket list” at a pretty rapid rate these days. But for a blogger, an online newspaper enthusiast, and conversationalist and a friend of the REALTOR, Howard Brinton will remain at the top of my “Interviews I wish we had done” file.

Here’s to you, Howard!

Russell Shaw – An interview.

admin — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:47:07 +0000

REPORTER’S NOTE: There are many people that we can interview for Real Estate Industry Watch. There are very few as colorful, fun and most important, as successful and experienced as Russell Shaw. REIW’s Eric Blackwell caught up with Russell (via phone) at the Star Power Seminar in Orlando Florida. This has been my favorite conversation to date.

Russell Shaw is a real estate success story. He and his team have closed over 500 sides in a single year. They year over year continue to be among the best of the best in the real estate business. His experience is proven and his smarts come from the street and years of experience.

REIW: Can you tell us a little about yourself? How did you get started in the real estate business and how did you get to where you are now?
Russell: This is actually my 31st year in the real estate business. I have been selling homes since 1978…so it has been a while. I have been with the same real estate office the entire 31 years.

REIW:

How did you decide on that firm?

Russell: Two of the people I knew best were with the company I am now with. I trusted them. They said go there and I went. I have been there ever since!

I am not saying it was a good way to make a decision! I did not have a lot of good reasons for getting in the real estate sales business. I was broke. I needed to make money. I thought “What the hell” …I made 10 sales and the rates started going up…I made money and spent every dime… the difficult part was the next year I made only half as much due to the interest rates!

REIW:

How long did you live ‘hand to mouth’ before you really started increasing the numbers of your transactions to your current level.

Russell:

The first 12 years I was only an average real estate seller at best. Becoming a lister transformed me into the volume I have today…..I watched people who had business seemed busy and were CALM!! (chuckle)…their business was listings. I wanted to live like THEY did.

It is funny to think about it now. Back then, I did not even know how to price a property. At that time, the company offered zero training. They did not want to train their competition!

My first real training was CRS classes. Our instructor was Bob Wolfe, who was grossing $400,000. That seemed stratospheric at the time…even $100,000 seemed unattainable. All of the highly successful people SEEMED on an emotional level DIFFERENT from me. I wanted to be where they were and to have that for myself.

One of the training opportunities that I took part in right away was STAR Power. Unlike some trainers who encourage everyone to wear suits they can not afford, at STAR Power, people were casually dressed, but genuinely wanted to be helpful . I kept meeting all these different people and thinking If THEY can do it, I can do it! (more laughter.)
REIW: I know that you encourage REALTORS to focus on listing. What would you say to an agent who predominantly is a buyers agent?

Russell: Listing requires a different skill set. If they are currently solely focused on buyers, they have likely never learned how to list and they have conned themselves into the belief that a “loyal” buyer is just like an automatic paycheck. When I changed from being a buyer’s agent to a listing agent, it was like changing careers. Everything that I had to know,and every skill set that I had was irrelevant. One book that was instrumental for me was Listing Magic by Gael Himmah. It is now out of print and he’s not a great speaker (chuckle)…but his book had an impact. He was a tough broker who would not permit an agent who just HAD to show a house to a buyer to even show ONE house until they met their listing quota (10 listings a month). He would insist that they take the listing at any price….just GET the listing!

REIW: Do you do that today?!

Russell: (laughter) Of course not. What we do is offer our listing clients the privilege to cancel at any time. Therefore I cannot take the listing unless they are serious. We HAVE to qualify them. That being said, I have a single minded focus. We go after listings! We are ALSO one of the top selling buyer’s agents AS WELL,but it is by ACCIDENT -it comes from the listings!

The truth is, a guy could make a living off of 20 listings essentially because he would get the buyers off of the sign calls from those houses alone . Let me give you an example. I took a listing that was a neglected beat up house. I would always tell people…the house is in bad shape—I am not sure it is for you. They would insist on seeing it! People would call me continually off of that sign.I KNEW that if I could qualify them off of that sign, they were seriously looking to buy. Just as I told them — when we went inside of the house, they would recoil in disgust at it! It was filthy. But, at this point they would be open to tell me what they were REALLY looking for! Using this little beat up house alone, I was selling 2 houses a month until some SOB bought the house! Then I had to try and find another one! (laughter).

REIW: We know that you contribute to AgentGenius.com as a writer. How else can agents that want to grow their businesses learn from you?

Russell: Yes. I am a writer on AgentGenius. I do have my own blog Number1HomeAgent

as well! It is pretty much purely what I have written previously on the Bloodhound Blog and on AgentGenius and other places, but is limited STRICTLY to REALTOR success theories. I like that better because some of my more opinionated writings are not there and you can get straight to what will help you. (REPORTERS NOTE: His latest post (written after this interview has several podcasts of an agent training he did–not to be missed!) I also teach classes to 100-250 agents that I am in front of physically a month. When I see what people charge REALTORS for these types of training and learning experiences, I detest that. I want to help REALTORS and you cannot do that properly if your focus is that much on making money.

REIW: Thanks Russell for the interview. Parting shot, Russell, what are your goals for the remainder of the year and into the next?
Russell: The first goal is to get my business solidly in the black to where it was and better than before the market downturn. Second on my list is to develop quality content to help other REALTORS truly succeed. As part of that goal, I want to learn video editing. I want to take every talk that I know how to do. I want to video them and put them on the web. I would like to leave my content on the web permanently so that 15 years from now an agent could learn from me on the web and I can hopefully pass on some useful information to them.Equus dvdrip

Marnie Blanco from RE/MAX on REMAX.com

admin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:20:30 +0000

Heavy Load movie

Marnie Blanco

Marnie Blanco joined RE/MAX in July 2003 as Manager of Information Technology Marketing. She was promoted to Senior Manager of eBusiness and IT Marketing in December 2005 and was named Vice President of eBusiness in June 2006.

Eric Blackwell, from Real Estate Industry Watch, interviewed Marnie about how REMAX.com’s network of broker sites and listing aggregation initiative is doing now that it is over two years old.

REIW: Welcome Marnie! We have actually known each other for a few years,
but for those who don’t can you tell us a little about yourself and the
role you play as VP E-commerce at RE/MAX International?

MB:[>>MB] I have been with RE/MAX for 5 years. My background is in IT and Marketing. I actually started out as a developer and realized 2 things. 1) I wasn’t very good at it and 2) I like to talk too much to sit in a cube and program. So, I moved into consulting, training, marketing and sales. My position I have now combines all these worlds into one, so that is great. The eBusiness department at RE/MAX is responsible for all technology that is outward facing to our membership. That includes development, vendor management, product management and strategy, data and content, training, support, communication and marketing. We work with a lot of good people to get this all done.

REIW: When we first met, it was back before REMAX.com included a network
of brokerage sites and included so many listings. How has the rollout gone?

MB:[>>MB] It has been a roller coaster! Very challenging, scary and fun all at the same time. A product that should have taken several years to create was basically done in 9 months. This has it’s advantages and disadvantages. It was great to get to market so quickly, but the product has a lot of growth to be done. We have created a wonderful baby and now it is time for it to grow up!

REIW: How are the statistics now? If you don’t mind sharing, how many
leads are being generated for REMAX associates?

MB:[>>MB] We have brought in over 4.9 million unique leads since its launch in March 2006. That equates to about 175k a month and 5700 a day.

REIW: What do you think are the next steps to improve the process so
that buyers are better served and agents cash more commission checks?

MB:[>>MB] We are in the process of redesigning the remax.com. We took an existing infrastructure and pushed a tremendous amount of functionality and data into it and it has served us very well. However, remax.com has outgrown its skin and needs a better look and feel, easier navigation and even more bells and whistles. This will keep the leads coming and create a trusted and needed relationship with remax.com and the brand of RE/MAX overall.

REIW: What are the coming trends that you see in the internet
marketplace for real estate?

MB:[>>MB] Capitalizing on the market is always important, so being able to offer data and education on Foreclosures at this time is good. Delivering data in a new and fresh format is what is important. To date we are still the only national real estate franchise that has all the listings, but that won’t last forever, so we need to be creative with delivery of data and user experience to keep them coming to remax.com. Things such as open house and driving tours, simplified search, more photos, virtual tours, etc.

REIW: I have always assumed that most of the traffic to REMAX.com comes
from the huge spends that you guys do on national TV and Radio. Is that
the case from your point of view? Are there other sources of traffic to
REMAX.com?

MB:[>>MB] Advertising plays a big role, because it creates the brand awareness. We see that about 60% of traffic comes direct, meaning they type in remax.com or they have it bookmarked or they link to it from another site – and that is driven through brand awareness. 30% comes from natural search engine results on Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. and 10% comes from paid search results from the big search engines.

REIW: Ok, Marnie. Thanks for the interview…Final shot is yours! What
else haven’t we asked you that we SHOULD have?

MB:[>>MB] We recently were able to capture the #2 spot for 3 months running in terms of most visited real estate websites (realtor.com being #1). This current month we dropped to #4 and it may fluctuate from month to month. It is always our goal to be #1 and we will continue to make tweaks to understand consumer activity, stickiness to the site, and value to our RE/MAX membership and their clients, until we reach that #1 spot. We will get there and that will be a thin slice of heaven!

Louis Cammarosano, of HomeGain Interviewed by REIW

Wayne — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:08:18 +0000

The List

The Real Estate Industry is covered by a lot of interesting people from a lot of interesting angles. Not all of them are REALTORS. For our inaugural interview, Real Estate Industry Watch’s Wayne Long caught up with the General Manager for Home Gain, Louis Cammarosano via email and interviewed him about HomeGain, the real estate industry and where third party lead generators like HomeGain fit into the real estate marketplace.

REIW: Can you give us a little bit of your background before coming to HomeGain? (Education, Business Background, etc.)? What made you choose HomeGain?

LC: I was a tenured school teacher in the South Bronx during the late 1980′s prior to attending law school. Upon graduation from the Fordham University School of Law, I worked at Cravath Swaine and Moore in New York and London. I spent most of the 1990′s as a corporate Mergers and
Acquisition and securities attorney working in London, Paris and Warsaw. In the early 2000′s I was European and corporate counsel to HomeStore(now Move.com). I joined HomeGain in early 2005 as General Counsel and worked on the sale of HomeGain to Classified Ventures. I was promoted to General Manager of HomeGain in mid 2006.

REIW: You are the first from HomeGain to venture into the Internet and engage the agents and brokers in conversations out on the web (in blogs, etc.). Why did you go this route and how have you found it to be?

LC: Blogging conversations give you insight into how agents and brokers view themselves, their profession, the competition and third party vendors. I noticed an array of opinions by reading blogs. I also discovered that while the vast majority of HomeGain customers are satisfied with our products and services, many agents and brokers that do not use HomeGain, not only have a negative opinion of our company, but actively encourage others not to use HomeGain. I thought by engaging some of these enraged bloggers that I might learn the cause of their dissatisfaction. Most of the complaints about HomeGain were based on an ignorance of what we really do and I was able in many cases to explain the value of our products and services to those willing to converse with me.
Having done so, I realized that commenting on other blogs was not enough. HomeGain needed its own platform to exchange ideas amongst our members. So we set up the HomeGain blog. After a few months, we decided to open up our blog to some of the country’s top real estate bloggers, including Brian Brady, Jay Thompson, Joseph Ferrara, Kristal Kraft, Pat Kitano, Mary McKnight, Nicole Nicolay, Mike Farmer, Carole Cohen and Thomas Townsend, many of whom had ill opinions of HomeGain. I wanted to give our agents the advantage to hear directly how these bloggers thought they could help real estate agents be successful – even if it meant that our agents would be successful by using other products or services or striking out on their own. From our experience with the guest bloggers we learned that blogging could be a valuable component to a real estate professional’s marketing strategy, so last week we launched the HomeGain Agent Blogging Platform whereby HomeGain Source4Sellers customers can set up their own blog and blog directly from the HomeGain platform.

REIW: Is there a reason that this was not done sooner?

LC: When I became General Manager I made it my primary focus to work on customer and employee satisfaction. These endeavors are time consuming but rewarding. I was less interested in how HomeGain was perceived by the outside world and more focused on making sure our customers got the value they expected from us and that our employees were focused on serving them. Having achieved some success in that regard – agent satisfaction based on quarterly polling of our agents has risen steadily since early 2007 and our employee attrition rate is now extremely low, I turned some of my attention outward.

REIW: You have successfully built the HomeGain blog and comment frequently on the other blogs. Approximately how many hours per week do you blog or otherwise interact on real estate via the web?

LC:Probably 7-10 hours a week. Mostly in the early morning, late evenings and on weekends. Having the guest bloggers as well as many of our agent customers blogging for us helps cut down on the time required. We also recently set up HomeGain Nation in beta form. HomeGain Nation is a social networking platform for our agents to interact. HomeGain Nation requires less time than blogging as I don’t have to provide content and merely moderate the forum.

REIW: The current market seems to have affected everyone to one degree or another? How much have your lead generation activities slowed?

LC: During the slow market last year our BuyerLink product produced record revenues and grew about 10%. This we attribute to a buyer’s market and because the product is a great way to participate in a cost per click program without having to manage key words. Our customers also tell us that the traffic purchase through BuyerLink converts much better than traffic purchased directly through Yahoo! Or Google. Our AgentEvaluator product and Source4Sellers products suffered declines due to the decrease in transactions year over year.

REIW: What are you doing to maximize the leads that you are generating?

LC: We are spending more time communicating with our customers and encouraging them to respond to all leads that we send them, to do it promptly and to customize their responses. We have created blog posts on this topic as well as emailed and called our agents to encourage them to treat each lead with care and attention.
In this market consumers need Realtors more than ever as selling a home isn’t just a matter of sticking a “For Sale” sign in the ground, holding an open house and closing the deal. Consumers who fill out our AgentEvaluator lead form don’t do so for fun – they are actively seeking the help of a Realtor. So we are focusing our efforts in making sure our agents respond to these invitations and make a good impression.

REIW: HomeGain is currently owned by a consortium of traditional media (newspaper) companies. How does this affect decisions you make day to day?

LC: It does not. Classified Ventures bought HomeGain in order to diversify their print holdings. We report our results to Classified Ventures on a monthly basis who in turn report them to the individual newspaper owners.

REIW: Do you collaborate with them and do you consider them competitors in cities where there is a strong newspaper owned real estate presence?

LC: Not at all. The newspapers’ real estate web sites and Homescape.com, Classified Ventures National listing site display listings and HomeGain does not.

REIW: Has that ever been an issue for you?

LC: No, indeed HomeGain collaborates with Homescape on many fronts, including sales and marketing and the placement of HomeGain’s instant home valuation product on Homescape.com.

REIW: What are your growth plans for HomeGain?

LC: We will continued focus on customer and employee satisfaction and strive to create products that are responsive to the market. We will also be spending more time than in the past promoting the HomeGain value proposition to real estate professions. We need to get the word out that we are a trusted partner.
Our success is based on Realtors’ success. We don’t use real estate agents’ content as bait to sell advertising. Indeed, all of our products focus exclusively on connecting visitors to HomeGain.com with Realtors, not third party advertisers. We need to get that word out better.

REIW: You obviously are taking HomeGain into the new age of the web…how does this play into your plans?

LC: We will employ whatever techniques or innovations that help consumers connect with real estate professionals. We won’t, however,have anything on our site if it only encourages pages views or creates buzz. We want our visitors to connect with our agents, so we don’t want to put anything on our site that may intrigue the consumer to the point of under playing the value of finding a Realtor.

REIW: We understand you will be speaking at the Bloodhound Unchained event. How did you get involved there and what will you be saying to the group?

LC: I was invited by Greg Swann and Brian Brady because I am a regular commenter on the BHB. Brian and I have become good virtual friends and he and I exchange emails and speak regularly. Brian is a guest blogger on the HomeGain blog. I am not going to the Bloodhound Unchained event with any agenda. I believe my participation will be on a panel. I will try to answer the panel questions in a manner that will help the real estateagents attending the conference gain some insights into how to be successful.

REIW: Parting shot…what are some things that you wish every agent knew about HomeGain, but that they just do not seem to ask?
LC: Realtor satisfaction and the promotion of Realtors are our only goals, we don’t have long term contracts, you can buy our products online, you can blog directly from HomeGain and reach a consumer audience, we pride ourselves on customer service and you can select a HomeGain product based on how you wish to pay – by monthly subscription (Source4Sellers), per visitor (Buyerlink), or only if you close a deal through a HomeGain lead (Agent Evaluator).

REIW: You get the last word, Louis. Anything else you would like to tell us?

LC: I’ve spoken enough already. Thanks for having me.