Company Sells 240 of its Real Estate Domain Names

Orlando based Lead Lease is selling more than 240 of their real estate domain names, perfect for Arizona and Florida real estate professionals.

Examples of some of the names are listphoenixhomes.com, buytampacondos.com, and sellorlandocondos.com. They all have town names and action words like "buy", "sell", etc.

Lend Lease is so confident that the purchase and implementation of any of their domain names will bring absolute success to the purchaser, that they're offering a 100% satisfaction guarantee with each sale. If at any time the buyer feels they aren't 100% satisfied with their purchase, Lend Lease will refund 100% of the purchase price with no questions asked.

A complete list of domain names and pricing is available upon request at ray@leadlease.com.

Question: I'm not sure if Lend Lease is actually selling you these domain names without any other requirements, or if they're doing this with the requirement that you have them build the website for you.

KB Home and Martha Stewart Create More "Martha Homes"

KB Home and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. announced a couple days ago that they entered into a new agreement to expand construction of more "Martha Homes" across the country.

The agreement also calls for Martha to create a line of interior and exterior home products and design options called "Martha's Choices", that homebuyers can pay extra for.

The companies seek expand on their positive consumer response to the first Martha Stewart-inspired community developed in the town of Cary, NC, which is due to open on March 12, 2006. The second community is due to open in Atlanta, GA, in late spring 2006.

Additional developments are planned for Houston, TX; Charlotte, NC; Las Vegas, NV; Southern California; Orlando, FL; and Daytona Beach, FL. In total, the number of lots to be developed in these markets is more than 1,800. These communities are expected to open within the year, and the companies are actively reviewing other attractive locations for new developments.

Impact Factory Launches New Real Estate Marketing Service

Marketing services firm, Impact Factory, announced today the launch of California Fine Properties, a service designed to help real estate agents market hard-to-sell properties.

The service leverages the power of the Internet through a combination of websites designed to rank high on search engine results of Google and Yahoo, and an array of marketing content such as podcasts and video tours.

They're also going to do some print advertising in places like salons and drycleaners.

An example of one of the websites they're creating is GlendaleFineProperties.com, the website of their first client, Stella Owen of Century 21 Crest.

Zillow - Sign of the RE Apocalypse?

Last week, Zillow launched on the Internet.

Zillow's website provides a free home valuation database to anyone who visits it. The company claims it has home values on over 60 million homes in the USA.

Zillow was co-founded by Richard Barton, the guy who founded Expedia.com.

For kicks, I typed in my home's street address, and was impressed that it came up with the same value that I had had in my head. Not bad!

What's also cool is that when it returns a home value, it displays an aerial photograph of the neighborhood pinpointing the property.

So now that folks no longer have to contact a Realtor to get a fair home value, does this bring the professional real estate business closer to an end? Not at all! Consumers will get information for free from the Internet more and more. What they can't get from the Internet is service. And isn't that what a Realtor sells? Service?

If anything tools like Zillow will separate the wheat from the chaff. Realtors who focus on service and performance will find that the Zillow's of the world are making their work a whole lot easier.

Realtor Gets Country Music Recording Contract

Jenny True is a Realtor with Century 21 Atwood Realty in Mankato, Minnesota, but has a dream to become a country music recording star.

It all started two years ago when she was at home singing at the top of her lungs, and felt her musical self wanting to break free. She ended up singing for four hours that night. That's when she knew she wanted to become a singer.

One day after returning home from work, she turned on the television to watch Oprah Winfrey, which she had taped earlier. She saw a segment entitled, "Wildest Dreams Come True". She wrote an e-mail to the show, and a staff member replied with a suggestion of contacting Robert Metzgar, a Nashville-based record producer.

She contacted Metzgar, and learned about Tommy Cash, the younger brother of Johnny Cash who also happened to be a Realtor-turned-country-music-recording-artist. In August of 2005, she got up the nerve to visit Metzgar in Nashville.

She auditioned for him, and he must have ended up liking it, because she's now expecting to release her first album later this year.

Read full the details on Jenny True's website.

Teardown Brokerage Expands its Reach

Value In Land, Inc., a real estate company dedicated to marketing "teardown" houses, has plans to open offices in New York, Florida, Atlanta and California.

Set apart from other real estate brokerage companies, Value In Land is focused entirely on selling Teardown properties. They charge no commission or fees to a seller unlike traditional real estate firms, instead being paid by the builder who buys the property.

They market their properties to thousands of builders, and are able to create a competitive marketplace, considering these properties are developed into grander structures, and thereby resulting in a much higher sales price.

Julius Software Launches New Real Estate Software

Miami-based Julius Software announced today the release of its new real estate management software.

Designed for investors, brokers, and property managers, Julius is designed to make management of real estate investments less complicated. The solution allows investors to easily and conveniently keep track of their investments in various properties, relationships with vendors they use for various products and services, and relationships with their tenants.

Julius allows real estate investors to maintain as much or as little detail about their businesses as they feel is needed. It arranges each investment and tenant relationship into its own, discreet file and reports and manages information that the investor needs to manage the investment and tenant relationships for maximum efficiency and return.

The company claims to have focused on ease of use so that even investors with only minimal computer skills and confidence will be comfortable using it.

Not yet available in stores, it can be purchased online from Julius' website, or over the phone.

Oodle Classifieds Now Carrying Point2Agent Listings

Oodle and Point2Agent announced a partnership today whereby property listings from Point2Agent will now be featured on Oodle's online classifieds.

Oodle is an online classified ad site, where people list their stuff for sale and employers list help wanted ads. Point2Agent offers real estate agents and brokers with web-based software to build their own agent websites.

The two businesses got together and built a bridge between them, using RSS technology, whereby property listings created on Point2Agent websites will now be displayed on Oodle's classified site.

ZipRealty Adds Several New Online Tools

ZipRealty, a national full-service residential real estate brokerage, introduced several new features on its website intended to help buyers to search for and track price reductions on listed homes and to give sellers more visibility.

Called "Price Track," the new feature displays a listed home's complete price history, including the amount and date of each price reduction. If there are multiple price reductions, users will be able to see each time the price was dropped. Buyers can also see the number of days each house has been on the market in most regions.

Among other enhancements...

View Similar Homes - offers users the option to see homes with similar criteria that were previously viewed by other home buyers.

RSS Listings - ZipRealty now offers MLS home listings delivered via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to the news reader of your choice.

Search for a Real Estate Agent by Languages Spoken.

4MySales.com Launches New Promotion and Lead Generation Service

4MySales.com announced the launch of its new suite of real estate promotion and lead generation tools.

New features to the existing 4MySales product offering include a customized marketing plan generator, lead generation resources, and two new agent website lead collection tools.

The customized marketing plan is designed to allow agents to target specific areas of improvement in their current business practices, while the two new online lead collection tools, include an online lead aggregator and a real estate blog. Finally, 4MySales has added an audio email marketing feature to their existing drip email system to allow the client to include virtual audio tours in with their email marketing messages.

Davey Johnson Pitches Paragon Financial

Paragon Financial Corporation announced today the signing of four-time golden glove winner and two-time World Series champion Davey Johnson to a multi-year deal.

Johnson, the current Coach of the US Olympic baseball team, will operate from Paragon's Orlando office as part of the company's athlete marketing campaign, opening new offices throughout Florida.

Davey Johnson is no newcomer to the real estate world. Upon retirement from Major League Baseball, he became active in commercial and residential real estate through his privately owned and operated Major League Reality headquartered in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Although Johnson subsequently sold his real estate brokerage business to Coldwell Banker, he maintained an attraction to the financial services sector, and specifically an interest in developing a mortgage origination firm.

USAToday Adds FSBO Listings

USAToday updated its real estate web portal by adding FSBO listings.

In a partnership with ForSaleByOwner.com announced today, the nationwide newspaper exposes millions of its online readers to FSBO listings.

The deal is ForSaleByOwner's first alliance with a media company. Under terms of the partnership, USAToday will direct its more than 9.8 million monthly website visitors to an exclusive, jointly branded site offering the full range of ForSaleByOwner.com services including listing packages, homes for sale by owner, city profiles and school reports.

CaptiveLeads - New Lead Referral Service

BuyLookSell, Inc. announced today the launch of its new lead referral service for the real estate industry, CaptiveLeads.com.

The company claims its new web service will increase qualified local sales leads for the real estate and mortgage industries by more than 200 percent. CaptiveLeads provides leads from traditional classified advertising in newspapers, while simultaneously accessing leads in the red-hot online classified advertising marketplace.

House4Cell Offers Enhanced Service

House4Cell announced today that it released some enhancements to its real estate text messaging service.

The service can now deliver photos to the phones of inquiring home buyers, along with additional information via email or FAX. Home buyers can even click a button to directly connect to the listing agent via its "click-to-call" functionality.

Real estate agents hang House4Cell riders from the signs of their listings, informing homebuyers of the availability of instant information. Prospective home buyers see these signs and simply text message a short, custom code to a special House4Cell phone number. Within seconds, all of the essential property information -- including price, square footage and amenities -- are immediately sent back to the buyer's phone, along with photos. Buyers can request more information via email or FAX or click a button to call the agent. With every inquiry, the real estate agent is immediately notified of the lead.

See our original posting announcing House4Cell.

Real Estate Blog Network Launched

Real Estate Blogsites, co-founded in January 2006 by John Helmering and Kristen Veraldi, is a web based technology platform that allows real estate agents, brokers and other industry professionals to virtually syndicate and make information visible to an on-line audience in real time.

As a real estate professional, you can use a blog to publish your listings, your thoughts, question and answers, as a way to build credibility with your potential customers. According to the company, "Real Estate Blogsites" take blogs a step further by providing key tools designed to leverage blogs within the real estate industry.

The company has published a comparison chart explaining how Real Estate Blogsites is differentiated from standard blogs.

Property Listings by Credit Card

A company called Progressive Homesellers, Inc. announced that it's the first company to allow home sellers to list their home online with a credit card.

Visitors to the company's website can enter all of their property information into an online form and then actually pay the real estate commission in advance. Progressive is a realtor referral service, and listings are taken by agents at brand name brokerages like Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Prudential who have agreed to list and sell homes for a $2,500 flat fee.

To ensure experience, Progressive Homesellers requires that its Affiliated Realtors have been actively selling real estate for at least five years and are in the top 5% of agents in their state by sales volume. To keep costs low, agents conduct all business remotely, by phone, fax and email. Although sellers almost never meet their agent in person, they receive full service representation, complete with MLS exposure, yard sign, contract negotiation and transaction coordination from offer to close.

Wall Homes Launches Web Portal for Realtors

Wall Homes announced the launch of a special web portal called "Realtors Corner" for real estate professionals.

The web portal links real estate professionals to a calendar of activities, current buyer incentive offers, and a section for comments and suggestions relating to new Wall Home communities.

Wall Homes builds homes in neighborhoods throughout Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, Texas. They offer a variety of single-family detached and attached homes.