Easy real estate report ideas for your blog

1.  Monthly Absoprtion Rate.

The real estate absorption rate is easy to calculate: just divide the total number of active listings by the total number of sales in the past month.  Ex 300 listings / 50 sales = 6 months of inventory. This is one of the quickest and most useful stats out there.  For even more mileage, do the real estate absorption rate for your city and also for your specific niche areas.

2. The Basics.

Try writing a quick post with the following:

• # of sales
• Average sale price
• Average price per square foot
• Optional: break down by 1/2/3 bedrooms

3.  Inventory Gauge

This is the only subjective report, but at the same time it’s a great chance to add some visual flair to your blog.  First, you’ll need three images to represent low, average, and high inventory.  I used an engine-type gauge, but you could also use some fun local imagery, such as a surf report image for a beach town, or a wine glass with different amounts of wine in it for napa valley, etc.

Everyone talks about the importance of generating prospective clients online, but there’s a lot less discussion about what to do with them once they’ve actually contacted you requesting more information.  After my resource site www.sfcondosales.com started generating over a lead a day in 2007, I quickly learned how time consuming it can be following up with dozens of prospects, and the relatively dismal conversion rates found with everything online.

When I get repetitve requests for the same information, I use canned responses in Gmail to quickly send the info people want (customized with their name, of course).  Write the email once, then just select it from the drop down menu every time you get the same question.  To turn it on, click on the Labs tab in your Gmail Settings.   In my experience, I’ve had the same response rate with canned emails as I did when I wrote each one by hand (makes sense, as they look exactly the same!)

I can imagine some readers in the industry flinching at the very term “canned responses”, and it’s worth pointing out something I’ve noticed: Not everyone searching for real estate on the internet wants to have a lengthy personal discussion with you right away.  They want immediate and accurate answers, and they want you to earn their trust by providing those answers immediately and accurately.  The more value I can provide them early in the process, the more likely they are to welcome a personal discussion with me later. And as a matter of course, I only send a canned response when it would be the exact same email I would have written anyway.