The Southeastern real estate companies have gained a big spot on Inc. Magazine's 5,000 fastest growing companies of 2012. Out of the 5,000 companies, 69 were real estate companies and out of the 69 total real estate companies, 17 were from the Southeast. It is not a big suprise as the southeast has consistently been on top of lists for most affordable housing markets bringing many to strongly consider pushing their funds towards a mortgage versus renting. View the full list of Inc. Magazine's top real estate companies.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Florida Woman Sets Up Fake Businesses For Multiple Mortgages
Rose Marie Sandrie, is being charged with bank fraud a little over $1 million after she allegedly set up many fake businesses in order to attain multiple mortgages. She is currently being held in the Florida Keys jail on a $1 million bond.
Investigators have gathered information stating that two companies owned by her, Loansource Mortgage and Sunshine Title, were used between February of 2002 and February of 2007 to make escrow account deposits and fraudulent withdrawals from her mortgages provided by National City Mortgage/PNC Bank. Essentially, she was sending false information to National City Mortgage/PNC Bank to get mortgages and then depositing money into escrow accounts which would be later transferred to her own personal accounts.
This fraudulent activity caused National City Mortgage/PNC Bank a total loss of $825,361.67.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Changes in Mortgage Financing Standards
It may get a little harder for some hopeful home buyers to qualify for a loan as Fannie Mae is tightening the standards. Some of the changes include:
- Increased credit score required (up to 640 from 620)
- More tax returns to be reviewed for self-employed applicants (up to two years from one year)
- Change in maximum loan-to-value ratios for ARMs (down to 90 percent from 97 percent)
- Change in loan-to-value ratio for some fixed-rate loans on two-unit properties (up to 85 percent from 80 percent)
- Down payment will drop for some co-op loans
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Tips of the Marketing Trade: Part 2
Earlier this week we shared a few ways to increase your website's results on the search engines. These include social media, comments and engagement, blogging and keywords. Here is Part 2 of this important list:
- Start a YouTube Channel. It is free and is based through the second most popular search engine in the world with over 4 billion views per day! We all have some form of expertise to share and what better way to give advice, share tips and create a brand for yourself than through interactive videos? The key to these videos is to make sure they are not too long (3 minutes should be good) and that the focus is on the consumer and how you are helping them. Self promotion and easy plugs will lose people's attention and leave you with a lonely video channel.
- Use everything Google has to offer. Since YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, you can guess who is number one. Yes, it is Google and being on the first page of it can mean major success. Google offer numerous sites and application such as Google Places, Google Adwords, and Google Plus, which should all be utilized.
- Measure your success to ensure it continues. If there is only one thing that you do from this comprehensive list, do this: Set up an analytics account for your website and study what is working and what isn't. This is the best way to ensure that your keywords are optimal, your bounce rates are low, and your inbound traffic is steady, and hopefully increasing, from your external links. If you own and operate a website, you need to know what this all means and how to measure it. Google Analytics is a great, user-friendly tool that can be easily integrated into a website and Google Webmasters is a more complex tool for the tech savvy website developers.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Tips of the Marketing Trade: How to Get Your Website in the Top Spots of the Search Engines
Being in the real estate industry means that you need to be persistent in your marketing efforts, specifically online. The era of door to door marketing is diminishing as more potential home buyers are starting their search online. It is estimated that nearly 70 percent of active lookers start through online search attempts. This statistics reiterates the importance of search engine optimization in relation to a real estate agents website. So how does one make their website rank high in the searches? There are numerous ways to aid in SEO but here are just a few to get you started:
- Pay attention to keyword details. Years ago the trick was to saturate your website with an abundance of keywords for search engines to pull from but now this can actually harm your website's rankings as the search engine's algorithms have become more advanced and detect repetitive keywords. Choose a list of 5-10 keywords that really speak to your target market, whether they are geographical, product/service orientated, or niche related. Then embed these keywords in numerous, yet appropriate places on your website. To add to this, if you have numerous websites or social media platforms, use these keywords as your anchor text for links between the sites.
- Social Media and Blogging is IMPORTANT. Social media and blogging are not always understood by industries across the board but when you are thinking about increasing your online marketing efforts, they are essential for success. Many of the social media platforms have contracts with corresponding search engines which means their sites are crawled through for active posts, customer engagement and number of external links. This also means that just having a page is not enough. The pages need to be consistently updated, every day if possible, in order to get the return you desire from the search engines.
- Incorporate reviews, comments and social sharing on your website. Getting people to be interactive and comment is the best thing you can have when providing a service to clients. This will enhance your brand recognition and create a following from potential clients. The more people you can get to say great things about your services, the more you can get them to share with their friends, and so on and so forth. Internet marketing is all about making something viral.
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