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Westlake Village, CA Real Estate News

By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
If you've clicked this link, obviously you want to give your opinion...and that's exactly what we want! Earlier this year, many of the local Southern California MLS boards merged, leaving us to make sense of their data (If you didn't know it already, there is no data normalization between MLS boards, making this task especially fun). RealtyTech has been working diligently to ensure our clients have the most accurate search results possible. We've also taken this time to update our current IDX search capabilities and layout. There is just one problem... we've had very little feedback from the truly proactive Realtors® out there regarding the needs of an IDX property search. So, with that said, what makes a good IDX property search? What features would your "dream" IDX include? Ease of us...
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By Cheryl Clayton, Conejo Valley and Simi Valley Realtor
(Westlake Village home buyers and sellers Thousand Oaks homes)
Westlake Village CA Open House this weekend, Sunday March 13, 2011 Sunday, March 13th 1-4pm Open House Westlake Village, North Ranch area 4539 Tam O Shanter Weslake Village (North Ranch) Built in 1980, 4+3, 3000 sw.ft., 4587 sq.ft. lot, granite counters in kitchen, expanded master suite, Reduced to $679,950, regular sale Virtual Tour This listing is located in the Ben Johnson Fairways off of Golf Course Drive and Kanan.
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
Of course you provide your customers' listings with video tours. Of course you place those same videos on YouTube... But are really using the power of videos to their true potential in your real estate business? Are you really? Instead of the usual videos of a home's interior, use videos to market you, the real estate agent, as an expert in your field. Brand yourself as the go-to realty professional in your area. How can you do this? Well, you're already offering useful information in articles, newsletters and blog posts on how to sell a home in a down market, how to give a home great curb appeal, how to figure out if you can really afford a home. etc. (aren't you?) Why not videotape yourself giving such information? In addition to writing an article on home staging, for example, put to...
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By Cheryl Clayton, Conejo Valley and Simi Valley Realtor
(Westlake Village home buyers and sellers Thousand Oaks homes)
  Open House today, Saturday, March 5th, 2011, 1:00-4:00pm 4539 Tam O Shanter, Westlake Village (North Ranch) 4+3, 3000 sq.ft., $679,950 Just Reduced NORTH RANCH home! Upgraded 4+3 w/expanded Master suite & expanded secondary bedrooms. Distinctive, herringbone-patterned hardwood entry leads to step-down living room w/dramatic stone fireplace, wet bar & French doors to yard. Formal dining room offers skylight & addl French doors to backyard. Attractive cook's kitchen includes double stainless steel dishwashers, double ovens, & large eat-in area. Laundry room off kitchen includes utility sink & plenty of cabinets. Double-door, step down downstairs bedroom w/bathroom/shower off hall, is currently used as office/study w/built-in cabinets. Upstairs oversized master br offers brick fireplace...
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By Kathy Smiley, "Real Estate results that make YOU smile!"
(Rodeo Realty ~ Fine Estates Westlake Village)
My dear Westlake Villagers -- Because you live in the best possible dot on the MAP of the UNIVERSE, I'm wondering if you realize how great our community really is: 1. Lovely, Mild Climate of Southern California, even in the winter it's in the 60's and 70''s! http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/93063 2. WE are close to the BEACH and to the MOUNTAINS! 3. Social Life in Westlake Village is DIVINE! http://www.805living.com/ 4. All of the ABOVE! Call or email Kathy Smiley for more information about living in this Westlake Village / Conejo Valley PARADISE!! (805) 497-7804, Check out my informative blog  and REal Estate website below for unlimited property searches at the Best REal Estate Search Site for Westlake Village REal Estate!  www.KATHYSMILEYHOMES.COM Happy Hunting! :) Kathy Smiley ...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
With more than 277 million people using mobile devices (smartphones) today, are you marketing your home listings via their mobile phones? Here are some tips to help you market your real estate listings to those potential clients who navigate the Internet via a smartphone device. Assign a unique text code or mobile ID to each of your property listings. This allows potential clients to get details on the property and your contact information, as well as view photos of the home. You'll be able to use mobile IDs for other advertisements, such as ads online, for sale signs, ads in newspapers and magazines, your e-mails and even your property brochures. Potential home buyers can click on property links to see pictures in the text message and then will be taken to a mobile website that will le...
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Swimming Pool and Spa Builder Contractor Westlake Village Los Angeles County and Ventura County - So Cal Pool Builders delivers quick completions, competitive pricing and quality workmanship! At SoCal Pool Builders, we are famous for our competitive pricing, speedy completions and quality workmanship. Most of our swimming pool and spa construction projects are swim ready in 5-7 weeks from start of excavation. Building a swimming pool and spa can be stressful. But it does not have to be with SoCal Pool Builders. Why? Because you deal directly with the Kevin Clayton, builder/owner/swimming pool contractor. We keep it simple, You deal with one person from start to finish who is easily accessible through all stages of the swimming pool and spa project in Westlake Village Los Angeles County...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
If you've decide to take the plunge into promoting your real estate services online, here are a couple of tips on how to get started developing relationships with potential clients. 1) Get some sort of auto-responder program. This is an automated e-mail system that will let you gather e-mail addresses of potential customers and then follow up with them automatically, even as you sleep (hence the "auto" and the "responder"). All you need to do is send out targeted messages to your list at regular intervals. Aweber.com and ConstantContact.com are two of the best known. Both are reasonably priced as well.  2) Then you'll need to get potential prospects to give you their e-mail addresses.  To start collecting email addressed from prospective clients, you'll need to provide an opt-in form on...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
We wrote in our last post about why participating in real estate forums where potential homebuyers and sellers hang out can be a great way to market your real estate services. This post will talk about the best way to do so. Aim to post to the forums you've chosen at least two or three times a week. The more you post, the more your posts' readers will see your signature and the better chance you have of getting the link to your website or blog clicked upon (and the more people will visit your website/blog). The most important thing you can do (or, in this case not do) is "sell" on these forums. For one thing, forums usually don't allow this. For another, blatantly offering your services, or claiming you can sell a home at full price in 30 days in a down market, or even just coming acros...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
In an agreement that will help real estate professionals market their services more easily to potential home buyers and sellers, the Burbank Association of REALTORS® has hired RealtyTech Inc. to provide IDX, Mobile IDX, real estate websites, along with other real estate products and services for all their members. An Internet Data eXchange (IDX) is an MLS search solution that allows those looking to buy property the ability to conduct searches of MLS properties within a user-specified area and their parameters. RealtyTech, Inc., based in Westlake Village, CA, has created IDX123, an IDX MLS search system that allows real estate agents to present all active MLS listings with their brand (i.e. picture and contact information). When a viewer clicks to see the details of a property it featu...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
In addition to optimizing your real estate website, setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts so that you may engage potential clients via social media marketing, blogging, and sending e-mail newsletters, a great way to market your real estate services is through forum posting. Posting on forums is free, by the way. Forum posts often come up in search engine results as people search for information on a product or service. Literally hundreds of thousands of forums exist online and cover millions of topics. Real estate is one of the more popular topics. Naturally, some real estate forums are geared just for Realtors and other real estate professionals, some are for homebuyers and sellers (consumers) and others are for both. We recommend you opt for forums where consumers congregate. To be...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
We spoke in our last post about how a well-optimized website can be the difference between success and failure in today's real estate arena. This is part 2... Many real estate professionals have tried pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns with mixed results. Yet perhaps the "worst" thing about PPC is the fact that once you end your campaign, your ads don't appear. Yet your competitors' still do! Good on- and off-site SEO, however, can see your site coming up in the first few listings of free (also known as "organic") results for months and years. And without the constant cost of high PPC campaigns. Optimize your website and then write and distribute articles or blog posts and these tools will work for you and be viewed by your target market for months and years. Not that you should ignore PPC c...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
That's a scary title: your RE business may fail without SEO... Unfortunately, it's becoming more and more true: unless you've been in the real estate profession for many years and have a ton of word-of-mouth referrals at your beck and call, your real estate business may very well sink today unless you go online and use search engine optimization (which, for the purposes of this post, includes social media marketing). Why? Because real estate is extremely competitive (but you knew that) and that competition is going online (which you also know). In addition, if you're not optimizing your website and using all that social media marketing can bring you, your competitors are! Don't get left behind. If you're a Realtor in a large market such as Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, At...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
As you create your real estate website, here are four things we believe are key to ensuring your website will bring you listings and client leads -- for free. 1) Be sure to place a link to your website on your Facebook page (you do have a professional page on Facebook, yes?). Engage in useful dialog with your followers about your local real estate market and you'll soon see an uptick in the number of people going to your website from the link on your Facebook page. 2) Update your website frequently with fresh content. This is probably one of the most important things that Realtors consistently miss. Updates can be as simple as posting to your web site's blog every day. Adding a page of content (information about your local area, for example) at least once or twice a month is also a grea...
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By Connie Tebyani, Platinum Home Staging, Los Angeles and Ventura County
(Platinum Home Staging, Inc. : RESA-Pro)
... Especially when it involves a brick fireplace that you've never been attracted to. Do you have one of these?  A dated reminder in your home of  just how old it may be?  You've never been attracted to it, but it was functional and served it's purpose; yet you never knew how to break it off and move on to something new?  These Westlake Village Home Owners were in that exact position when they called Platinum Home Staging, Inc.  for "counseling".  It was rocky, awkward and lop-sided; but it had a good foundation to work with and our Professionals were able to look past the flaws and work them through the process of a beautiful new relationship ~ yes, with their fireplace. This was just one element of remodeling this Westlake Village home.  These Home Owners wanted to go from Traditiona...
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By BILL EMHOFF
(JPMorgan Chase & Co.)
MORTGAGE RATES POP UP!!! According to Freddie Mac, the typical rate mortgage lenders were offering on 30-year Conforming Fixed Rate Loans was up to 4.83%, up from last month's record lows of 4.17% since rates hit bottom! The Japanese Candlestick Chart below shows the decline in the price of the 30-year mortgage backed securities over the last 30 days.  Conforming and Jumbo Fixed Rate Mortgage rates respond in the opposite direction, which is why mortgage rates are up.   Does this mean that Conforming and Jumbo Rates bottomed out, and we will now see rates continue to climb from here? The answer to both questions is the trillion dollar question that all of the analysts on Wall Street, Washington and on Main Street are trying to figure out.  So how does this news impact your timing to pur...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
We often talk on this blog about doing this, that or the other thing to create a search engine optimized website for your real estate business. So, we decided to offer you a basic step-by-step strategy for optimizing your realty website.. Step 1) Keyword Research You're going to need to find out what keywords your target audience uses consistently to find information about homes for sale in your area. You first should try "My City" + "real estate" and then "Neighborhood" + "real estate" and see what comes up. Also substitute terms such as "homes for sale," "homes," "homes for sale"+ "City," as well as "homes for sale" + "neighborhood." Aim to get as specific as you can (use the name of a development within a particular community or city, for a example), as the more specific the keyword ...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
As you decide to build your own website or revamp your current one, you should take some time to think about the domain name you'll use for the site. Many real estate professionals like to use their own names, "JaneDoeRealtor.com" for example. This can be both good and bad. The Good: It brands you as a real estate professional. Your name as your domain allows you to "take" your domain name with you should you leave the area in which you now serve clients. (That would be harder to do with "ShermanOaksRealtor.com" for example. Although you could sell that domain name for a pretty penny should you ever move....) The Bad: Most people search for homes using area-specific keywords ("homes for sale Sherman Oaks," for example). A domain with just your name does you no favors as a result. Many R...
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By RealtyTech Inc., Premium Websites/IDX/Marketing for Realtors
(Real Estate Technology and Marketing)
The Four Basic Elements of SEO Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simple, really (understand it's not necessarily easy or quick, however). There really are only four basic elements of SEO for your real estate website that you need to know. They are: Backlinks Good, engaging and informative content Title keywords germane to your website and SEO A search-engine-friendly site. Backlinks: Links from other sites back to your site (backlinks) are critical to your SEO success. The more links, all the better. But you need "good" links, which are those that come from sites that search engines trust. What are these sites? Article directories (such as GoArticles.com, EzineArticles.com and many others), blogs with a good number of followers, and Web directories such as SiteBeSeen and HotFrog. Gett...
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