The first things to consider when you are not receiving the kind of traffic you were hoping for is quite simple – What is on the market in my area? What has sold within the last 3 months within my area? How much traffic are properties in my area receiving?

So how do you obtain this information – Gauging how much traffic your neighborhood properties are getting is simple and easy. Get out in the community and ask the owners themselves. Go directly to your neighbor and ask. It’s that simple. If you are thinking to yourself… My house is superior to my neighbors, etc… That’s ok. What we want to find out concerns if the neighborhood is getting traffic. Remember, Real Estate is all about location. This will help determine how “in demand” your subdivision is at the moment.

Sold Data for the last 3 months – The county assessor will show you recorded sales based upon address and subdivision. You can research this online. If you have difficulty with this, shoot us an email at info@congressrealty.com and we will email this info to you directly. Once you have this data, this is where you can compare your property and its features to those that have actually sold and at what price, price per sq ft, etc…

What is on the market in my area – To accomplish goal 1, you need to know which properties are on the market. You can use sites like Realtor.com to determine this or send us an email and request they we email you all of the active properties in your neighborhood directly from the MLS.

Once you receive your paperwork via email from Congress Realty… it’s time to get things moving in high gear in order to get your property sold. The first thing to ensure is that you have email or fax functionality. You’ll need one or the other to return the listing documents. In the email from Congress Realty, you will have a minimum of 2 attachments and a max of 5. (this # will vary by what state the property is in) Every seller will receive what we refer to as an ER document. This document gives our brokerage the right to list your property on the MLS. Filling out this form is simple and should only take a few moments. Page 1 will be a cover letter. On page 2, you will fill in items 1-5. This will include seller name, address, price, and compensation to the buyer’s agent. Page 3 will have a list of various services that we offer. Check mark any that you wish to add and sign about 3/4 of the way down the page under seller 1. Add your date/email/phone/etc… You can return the E box agreement if you are renting a box from us, otherwise, just throw this page away. If your home was built before 1978, you will return the lead based paint document. If you are built after 1978, you can throw this page away.

The next document you have will be the profile document. This document appears more difficult than it actually is. The first thing to keep in mind is to disregard what the form says is required. Many of the “required” fields are actually completed by our brokerage. What you want to do is give us what you know about the property. The bedrooms, the bathrooms, the sq footage, etc… Just give us what you know.

Next, return any/all attached state disclosures that we provided in our listing email.

Lastly, you will want to add remarks, directions, and photos prior to sending in your paperwork. (If this isn’t possible to do beforehand, you can add the info at a later time if needed) To do this, you can email this information to info@congressrealty.com or use our pre-listing manager link: http://www.congressrealty.com/FileManagement/PreListingControl/default.aspx

Listing documents can be scanned in and emailed back to us at info@congressrealty.com or faxed to 866 314 7201.

Yahoo Real Estate just 3-4 short years ago had a very functional useful website. The site was powered by Prudential and provided a wealth of information to consumers. Next to Realtor.com, it was the most informative Real Estate site on the web for available properties. Skip fwd to today and while Yahoo Real Estate hasn’t become completely irrelevant…. traffic is down and the content is sub par at best. Which brings me to this thought… Why in the world is Yahoo renewing a partnership that hasn’t benefited Yahoo over the past 12-24 months? To summarize this allegiance, Zillow provides content to Yahoo. Zillow also will be allowed to display ads on the Yahoo Real Estate site. Yahoo of course will receive a cut of the revenue ads on the Yahoo site generate.

I can’t help but think this is Yahoo telling the world… they aren’t really interested in Real Estate at the moment. When Prudential cut ties with Yahoo, the content on the Yahoo site tumbled downward. Why is this? Simple answer, Prudential was able to provide MLS related data to Yahoo. Zillow can’t do this. Zillow relies upon 3rd party portals for content. (List Hub, VLS Homes, etc…) MLS data is strictly monitored for accuracy. 3rd party portals consistently provide outdated poor data to the web/public. Zillow will continue to feed this data to Yahoo through the 2014 year.

As a result, I will continue to not acquire my Real Estate related news/data from Yahoo until they go back to putting effort into the Yahoo Real Estate page. 5 years ago I visited the Yahoo Real Estate Page every single day. Today was the first day in over 6 months I visited the Yahoo RE page. I won’t be going back anytime soon.