Debbie Ferrari, Realtor, Orange County’s leading Internet Broker

 Statistics About Realtors

• More than 77 % own a digital camera.

• Nearly one million have a home office used for business.

• Realtors spend more than $510 million annually on client/business/escrow closing gifts annually. For a unique gift that your clients will never forget, you might want to Fedex them live lobsters or other seafood. Just send your escrow closing gift from here, what could be simpler?

• The median Value of a Realtor’s investment portfolio is nearly $160.000.

• Among Realtors, 84% either have a web site or plan to have one for business purposes.

• Realtors charge more than $18 billion on their credit cards per year.

 IF YOU FOCUS ON YOUNGER REAL ESTATE BUYERS

YOU SHOULD READ THESE STATISTICS ON THEM.

A recent study showed that younger buyers, those in Gen X and Y, looked for these qualities in a real estate broker.  See also what Baby Boomers preferred:

First, the age groups (approximations):

Boomers:  1944-1962

Gen X        1962-1977

Gen Y        1978-1995

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Qualities Preferred:

Honest and Reliable - GenX  68%  GenY - 77%   Boomers 58%

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Experienced and

Familiar with market:  GenX 62%  GenY 71%    Boomers 52%

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Dedicated and Patient:  GenX  38%  GenY 56%   Boomers 24%

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Young and Enthusiastic

Go Getter:                         GenX 7%    GenY  14%   Boomers 2%

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Don’t Know:                   GenX  9%    GenY 2%    Boomers 13%

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*Survey by C21, in 2006…

Among first-time home buyers, 84 percent are likely to use the Internet as an information tool in the home search, compared with 78 percent of repeat buyers.  Additionally, 62 percent of first time home buyers use the internet frequently, and just 57 percent of repeat homebuyers do the same.  (According to the 2006 profile of home buyers and sellers of the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Real Estate is such fun. Bill and I drove down to San Diego for the past three days (Sun, Mar. 18 thru Tues, Mar 20) for the Prudential Realty National Convention at the San Diego Convention Center (such great architecture it has, too).

Prudenial acknowledged award winning salespeople, me included, and there were speakers, cocktail parties and evening entertainment. We had the NAR economist speak to us, football great Terry Bradshaw cracked us up, and the Beach Boys took us back a few years with all their great hits.

We also visited hundreds of booths at the expo, which were very trafficked this year, compared to last. Advanced Access’ booth was VERY busy all the time.

Prudential Realty bought out the entire aircraft carrier, USS Midway, in San Diego harbor and all us Realtors got bused over there for a monster party on the flight deck, amidst dozens of old planes and choppers. That thing is BIG!!!

Prudential also put on two whopper parties in the lobby bar of the Westin right in Horton Plaza downtown and watch for the links to the three photo albums that bill made of the convention.

A friend loaned us a portable scooter for me to ride in the huge convention center and it sure made things easier.

We were able to easily leverage it in and out of the back of the van…

The next national convention is for the National Council of Exchangors, held here in Buena Park at the Knotts Berry Farm Resort and we already have rooms there. I am proud to be the president-elect of this national 1031 property exchangor group.

About 300 1031 property exchangors from around the U.S. and Orange County, too, will attend. Bill and I already have our room there at this four-star resort hotel.

Deb.

(Click on photo above to enlarge)

This Orange County Association of Realtors real estate mixer had the biggest turnout of real estate agents that I had seen in the past two years. But then the event was held at the very posh El Niguel Country Club.

The appetizers were to die for and the service and servers were terrific…I couldn’t believe how many waiters and waitresses they had for the big room and the Realtors had a terrific time. No doubt this is also because consumers have suddenly woken up to the fact that there IS no real estate bubble in South Orange County and if they are going to buy or sell a home, they better get to it. Which means, of course, that for 90% of them, they are going to be contacting a Realtor.

My husband, Bill Koelzer and I got there early. (See my 1000-page web site HERE and I had a great time seeing old pals like Todd Snider, Connie Hootman, Mary Powers and the ever-enchanting Karen Masters who, Bill says, when she wants to be, becomes the most beautiful woman in the world, next to me, of course.

And we met Realtors new to the area, like Amy Mosley, only two months here from New Jersey and who still maintains a thriving real estate office there. And we talked with Magic Gourgy, Mortgage Consultant from Wells Fargo.

Realtors there went nuts with the literally dozens of drawing prizes, mostly of the bottled kind, though there were some monster “baskets.” You know, the kind all wrapped in cellophane that look like a thousand dollars worth of stuff until you start taking them apart and see that the boxes of goodies aren’t QUITE so big as they looked through the plastic…but we will gladly take any that we win and give to the staff.

The Orange County Association of Realtors has a mixer every month, usually the same day/time each month. Call OCAR to see when the next one is or visit OCAR at www.OCAR.org.

Bill drove around today taking dozens of photos of agent’s yard signs and discovered something very important.  In most cases, the big realty chains that provide “company” yard signs for free or at a discount want agents to use ones that devote more than half the advertising area to the company—not to the agent.’

Now we all know that people buy real estate from an agent and not from a company; in fact, when they choose me to help them buy a house, they often ask me—after the fact—what company I’m with.

Well, I am sure that an agent has more credibility being with a large national firm like Prudential California Realty, Coldwell-Banker, Century 21 or Re/Max, but that does not mean that these firms should take up half the space on the yard sign.

My husband, Bill Koelzer, is writing a column right now on this subject.  To see some of the photos he took that show the good, the bad, and the ugly of Realtor yard signs, take a look at this.

How do you do your Real estate signs?  Do you just take signs of a particular design or format that the Broker or company gives you or recommends, or do you go out and design your own signs?  Ideally, ones that give YOU more room to talk about yourself and your contact info than the company gets?

Lemme know…gimme some comments on this…do a post now on this important subject, since yard signs are one of the world’s best way to get new real estate listings.