Real Estate Technology & Tools

We will continue to talk about the recent real estate industry changes and how Realtyna’s add-ons can help you overcome them. You can check out our blog about our marketing add-ons and how you can use them in your marketing strategies.In this article, we will talk about add-ons that improve the user-experience. The user-experience provides a positive experience for your website visitors to enhance the loyalty to your brand. A positive user experience is one of the key factors that influence your lead generation.First-time visitors expect your website to be on point. If this is not the case, there is a high probability they will leave it to never come back. What features do your real estate clients want to see on your website while scrolling through the listings?We will take a guess and ... 07/21/2020

 Top 10 WordPress Plugins for Real EstateIf you have a WordPress website, you probably use plugins to enhance everything about your site.I get a lot of questions about WordPress Plugins. First, what are they and mostly which ones should I be using.Plugins should solve a specific problem or provide a specific funtion. (source: Web Synthesis) They are add on applications or programsBecause I am targeting a real estate audience in this post, I will target my favorite plugins to you, my special readers.Here are my fave Top 10 WordPress Plugins:1.  Akismet: Akismet is a spam fighting service that protects your WordPress sites from comment and contact form spam by cross checking your comments and spam against their global database of spam. It's free or you can upgrade to a higher level of pro... 04/14/2017

So I hear you've been spending more time on YouTube than you used to. (hahaha don't deny it! We all have! #newreality #covid19) So in this post, I figured some YouTube pro level tips would be an excellent topic to cover. Let's make the best use of our time on YouTube! :)    Pro Tip #1 - Open in New Tab Whether you are on the YouTube home page with featured videos or on a YouTube search page where there is a whole list of search result videos to check out, you should be aware that a Control (Command) click will help you. When you  hold the Control key (Command key on Mac) as you click on the video links, each of the videos that you click on will open up in a new tab and you will then have set up a "what to watch next" sequence. When I do this in the Chrome browser, it is smart enough to... 04/25/2020

Knowing a real estate agent can mean juggling a million and one different things at once. That is why the expert on real estate comes up with a comprehensive list of incredibly useful tools to help you simplify your workload, and increase your productivity and streamline your workflows. Remember that most successful investors are pairing technology with what they do best to help find the best new opportunities, with the market getting more crowded, the right technology allows people to amplify their results. CANVA – DIY MARKETING COLLATERAL Canva is an online graphic design tool that makes creating marketing collateral amazingly simple. It has an easy-to-use drag and drop interface with different export options and layouts to choose from. To streamline the design process, Canva has mill... 05/27/2020

The coronavirus crisis has already placed a huge amount of strain on the world of commerce and industry, and it would appear the harshest period is yet to come for most countries around the world. With officially recorded cases passing 350,000 at the time of writing , many major economies are braced for impact on what is to come the next few months.As of right now, there may be an element of helplessness in terms of approach to business. These are unprecedented times, with most governments demanding all but essential service workers begin to work from home. The loss of commercial revenue over this period will be crippling for many, so business owners need to seek out every advantage they can to survive this incredibly turbulent period.Perhaps the one saving grace of the current pandemic... 04/02/2020

 We believe that your website, and the tools connected to it, are the backbone of your real estate business.Or they could be.......Over the past 15 years, I have spent a TON of time working with real estate agents on how their website fits into their overall marketing strategy. For years we discussed on ActiveRain how you could use your blog to drive traffic to your website and what kinds of landing pages you should link to. Those same tactics continue to be important for helping you to capture new prospects for your business. But beyond that, your website should also give you the power to nurture your existing database, especially your past clients and sphere, but also buyer and seller prospects/leads that you may have in your database. A few years ago, ActiveRain owner Ben Kinney brou... 03/23/2020

PreambleYes, you are correct... this is a tech tip Thursday post on a Friday. Furthermore, if you are having a feeling of deja vu, confirmed on the second count also! This post was part of the ActiveRain site June amnesia incident. 2020 is just full of little surprises for us :) Anyhow, had I been doing things in proper order, I would have posted to my regular site first and then copied here to AR. The last couple of posts, I hadn't been following that order. Thankfully, Google had cached my post and I was able to retrieve it (thank you google). Some of the posts of June are still in Google cache, some are not (that is a link to my instructions post in case you want to look for your own posts). I've been checking for a few people. I've had about a 50-50 success rate. Anyhow, here's a r... 07/17/2020

If you’d like to find out how to connect Chamberlain garage door opener to wifi, then you’ll want to read this Chamberlain myQ setup guide.First, install internet in garage  and learn how to install internet yourself through self internet installation guide. But, before beginning the MyQ setup, you’ll need a few things. These are: · An internet-enabled tablet or smartphone.· A 2.4GHz Wifi network in your home.· A stable Wifi signal in your garage.· The name of your network and its password. However, you can check stability of your Wifi by testing internet speed.Firstly, we will discuss how to complete the Chamberlain wifi setup on iOS devices. The steps for this are: 1. Make an account with myQ, or use an existing one.2. Press the + symbol in the top right of the screen.3. Tap on the ga... 07/08/2020

The real estate segment continues to be sought after and intence for years, thus, multiple companies seek their luck to win their audience. It makes the market pretty competitive to operate in, so businesses have to look for new and unordinary approaches to attract the clients. Building a real estate online platform could be one of the solutions to succeed in achieving the mentioned goal.Such software is just perfect to rationalize and automate all important operational processes, so creating a real estate application would foster the business progress. However, it’s not that simple as it might seem to be at first sight, but it’s worth all the efforts thanks to the benefits those services provide.Whatever market segment we’re talking about, there would always be two units interacting wi... 07/16/2020

Employees Face Anxiety Returning To Office Post COVIDAs more people return to work following coronavirus induced lockdown, many individuals are grappling with re-entry anxiety. The risk of contracting the virus in the workplace is a major concern as transmissions persist. Exposure to the virus translates to greater risk for families.Millions of people are apprehensive about spending time in public spaces. Taking public transport or going shopping is a frightening prospect. Likewise, returning to work may feel overwhelming; hence, the need for employers to provide support to employees experiencing re-entry anxiety. This requires the provision of resources and tools designed to promote the mental well-being of workers.Greg LaScala, CEO of LaScala IT in Michigan outlines effective ways to ... 07/15/2020

There are a number of reasons why a site may load slowly, some of those reasons include: cookies, content, server, CSS, JavaScript, etc. This infographic by TechWyse is designed to show you why your website may not be loading fast enough. This is a must read for internet marketing geeks or anyone who wants to improve their site’s performance. Fast page load speed makes for happy users. When you reduce the time it takes your website to load your time one site will increase while your bounce rate decreases, you should also notice an improvement in conversions.  07/14/2020

I have to be honest, I'm not ready to go back out there yet. It's very scary and i'm not talking about Covid. I'm talking about Google My Business. After the last fiasco with Google Plus, who in the right mind has faith in this product? Initially GMB looks like a decent product for advertising your business but posts within the platform seem to have little to no effect on actual SEO of your onsite content.Google News Sites however are all the rage these days. Having ones site ranked as a Google News website is tantamount to receiving a Gold Star from Google. Your content shows up higher in search, your trust rating and reputation scores go through the roof. That's really where folks eye on the prize needs to be... to heck with GMB optimization past a certain point it's meaningless. Go f... 07/14/2020

Source: Statista American households are getting smarter. This is shown by data from the Statista Digital Market Outlook. According to estimates, at least one smart home application is currently in use in 41.3 million U.S. households - by 2024 this number is expected to increase to 61.5 million. Devices from the category "Control and Connectivity" are the most common - these include smart speakers (Amazon Echo, Google Home etc.). In second place is "Home Entertainment" - which includes streaming devices (e.g. Amazon Fire TV stick, Google Chromecast) and multiroom entertainment systems - followed by "Energy Management" devices like thermostats or radiator controls.  07/14/2020

The real estate industry heavily deals with contracts and documents handling. As a realtor, you are required to provide disclosure agreements, leasing and mortgages originations, and a list of regulations to all your clients. Following this, the portable document format (PDF) has gained popularity in the industry. It’s merely a file format that will help you present your documents independence of hardware, operating systems, or software. Here are various ways suggested by IronPDF, the C# PDF library in which a PDF can benefit your real estate business. It Helps Maintain a Fixed-document FormatWhen working in the industry, you will deal with dozens of documents that provide evidence on the condition of your property. It’s, therefore, easy to get your files distorted through various syste... 07/14/2020

A luxurious bathroom is probably the best place to unwind and de-stress. Combined with some good lighting, and beautiful finishes, your bathroom can actually become cosy, calm, and indulgent.Here are a few things you have to consider while creating a luxurious bathroom:High-end MaterialsHigh-end materials such as granite, quartz, onyx, and Italian marble make for great countertops in luxurious bathrooms. You can even consider these for your flooring; but you need to make sure you use anti-skid mats so that you don’t end up slipping when the floor is wet.Go frameless with glass shower enclosuresA large glass shower enclosure will be a must-have in a luxurious bathroom if you want to separate the wet area and the dry area. It will give a seamless look to your bathroom by imparting a sense... 07/13/2020

Farmers and home gardeners alike plant more than they know will come up. Some seeds don't take. Some is lunch for the birds. Some plants that come up don't produce any vegetables though they consume the time and the fertilizer. This is true even after farmers, full time and weekend, have planted the corn in the best place for corn and the beans in the best place for beans As any top agent knows, targeting your marketing is important.  Not only does it help you to keep your marketing costs in check, but it also gives you more of a chance to get a return on your marketing dollars. Despite your effort to target, your message may not always reach the people you have in mind - so your seeds don't come up, so to speak. Help for Farmer Agent RealAgile is a new program that helps top agents to... 09/11/2009

There are so many real estate websites out there with hundreds of features and focuses. We all know that search engine optimization is probably the most important step toward a successful marketing campaign. Without SEO, most of our promotion attempts will fail. However, what most people miss out on by focusing solely on bringing people to the website is actually keeping people on the website. A clean, practical design on your website will help your visitors remain on the website for a longer period of time. It will also encourage them to interact with the features and even share or repost. Creative design is also an important part of this aspect of IDX websites. The key to a successful website in terms of design is to find the line between creativity and practicality. You might use a h... 07/13/2020

What is Substance abuse and its relation to mental health issuesSubstance abuse refers to the harmful use of substances that affect the cognitive function of an individual. The substances vary; for instance, there is alcohol or illicit drugs. The substances lead to behavioral, psychological, and cognitive changes that occur after repeated use. The individuals are usually distraught as they are persistently using the drug regardless of the harmful effects.There is a lot of correlation between mental health and substance abuse. It is linked by key researchers that mental health patients have a history of drug addiction. There are essays on substance abuse written by specialists that demystify issues about mental health and addiction. The patients frequently abuse a certain percentage of a... 10/26/2019

Remember the Essentials for Producing a Good Video   First of all, we're assuming the video you want to produce will have good quality, good sound, and be produced using basic editing skills. We've likely touched on these points before, but they bear repeating. Producing videos that get watched is key to their success. Otherwise, they can be monumental waste of valuable time. The bottom line, what can you do to make your videos more entertaining while capturing your target-demographics? Here are the essentials.  1. What is your secret weapon? The distinguishing trait that sets you apart from the competition.2. Who is your audience? What appeals to them? 3. Have a point - explain, entertain, tell a story -  (More on this next week) 4. Authenticity. Let your power shine. Sense of humor, s... 07/09/2020

More than 90% of the people in all developed countries have one or more vehicles. All the houses need a garage to protect those vehicles. Just like it is mandatory to have a roof in the place, nowadays, it is compulsory to have a garage in the house. If any person takes a new home or rents today, he must see if the garage facility is available there. If there is a garage facility, then it is perfect; otherwise, new garage build cost is different.In many places, the price of Garage not taken separately.It included the value of the house itself. It is considered a standard expected to have one rule inside the homes in the honorable market. Usually, if a garage is not found in the houses, then a garage is built there. New garage build cost included in the price of the house itself.Essentia... 05/28/2020