Ryan Ward's Blog: Technology

You've seen MLS photos shot with a wide angle lens like (like the ones below). It's probably a good photo, but, not in the form it gets uploaded to in the MLS. Typically, they get mashed (technical term) in from the left and the right until the picture looks stretched tall. Very bad image from a consumer perspective to say the least and wide angle photos really do make for better shots of rooms than a regular width photo. There is a simple way to avoid this, get your full width and not worry about the MLS screwing up what would otherwise be much better pictures of your listing and you can do it for free. Below, are two photos, one mashed up the way that the MLS would make it look and the other is the way it was intended to look and a wide angle should be…

In a previous post, I talked about the how and why I think that good single property websites can help to market our listings. At that time, I had really just implemented them for all of my listings and wanted to get back to something that I said I would do about what some best practices might be for reusing them. Before I get that far, I do want to say that I can in fact say that it was one of the single property websites that sold a listing that we closed on this past week.

The story, as relayed to me from the buyer whom I did not represent, explicitly told his agent that he was not interested in a home like the one that he bought (contemporary), but, the agent saw the single property website that also doubled as the virtual tour and forwarded him the…

A $60 investment is all that is needed to make your listings shine. For the last year or so I have struggled with how to improve the photos that I take for my listings and to be honest, I always considered it one of my weaker points. Unfortunately, it's one of, if not the most important aspect in marketing a listing. After all, no matter how many eyeballs you get to view a home online, if the photos are terrible or even average, it's difficult to get a buyer excited about the home. I went through several cameras, fooled with all of the settings and still there was no good solution.

As I was organizing my basement one day, I stumbled across an old halogen lamp like the ones you see at construction sites that I used to use when I rehabbed homes so I decided…

About two months ago, I posted about a new single property website using WordPress that I developed for added exposure to our listings. I had several people email and call me to see if they could use the WordPress theme for their listings. It took a while, but, I finally got the theme in a condition that would be easy enough for anyone who is familiar with hosting their own WordPress blog to use. For reference, here is an example of one that I created for a listing in Sandy Springs.

Be forewarned as if you are unfamiliar with setting up WordPress from scratch, this would probably not be the best place to start. It could be done as I have included a fairly reasonable read me file to get it up and running correctly, but, it is a bit time consuming if you…

Unbelievable would be what I thought when I first saw it. Poor business decision, if that's what it is would be the reality. You see, MSN has some very unusual search results here in Atlanta. Typically, the most frequently searched term by consumers looking for real estate will be "city real estate" and in Atlanta, MSN returns the same website something on the order of 498 out of the first 500 search results! Here's a screen shot:

O.K. So I guess it's not exactly the same result - they are all subdomains of the same website. Now if you were a consumer searching for Atlanta homes for sale using the most used keyword phrase, do you think it might be a good idea to serve up the same website over and over again like this? Seriously.

Here is the search…

What? That's right! I have joined Team Eric - and I have thrown all the weight of my entry behind it. I found out where I stacked up so now it's time to give back to those who have the most to gain from a victory - Eric Blackwell. Besides, what would I do with another REW website with a custom IDX? I already have one.

And one more thing - I want to help prevent some other people from attempting to sneak in the back door just before the contest ends to claim victory. This will mean that my entry will begin to fall - it already has because I did this a few days ago and Eric should now be benefiting from the additional strength passed on from me now. For any of you following the contest, you might have seen some shifting taking place on the first page over…

Recently there was a big bloggers conference here in Atlanta and I missed it. For good reason, but, missed it none the less. Anyway, seems a big topic at the event dealt with "web 2.0". A search for web 2.0 from wikipedia suggests that what it is more than anything is the idea that we should be creating more interactive websites. Sort of take some of the anonymity away and get users involved. I'm not sure as to its effectiveness in general, but, it seems like something that we should all be trying to shoot for - make it easier for consumers to contact us. More of an evolution of ergonomics and methods of contact rather than some really new great idea.

So I've fooled around and added a new tool, Plugin actually, to my Atlanta real estate blog for…

In an effort to improve marketing for all of our listings, I've finally decided to add single property websites as an additional marketing tool. These single property sites have been around for a long time and agents have been using them during listing presentations to woo their prey into listings, but, the truth is that these sites do little more than garble up the internet with more junk as none of them (at least none that I have seen) do anything except inflate the agent and seller while not really performing well in the search engines. Now, before I get comments about this post to the contrary, let me say that this is a generalization. Of course there are agents around that know how to effectively market on the internet and many have been able to use…