RentalsGuy

Yesterday I commented about how I’m starting to use social media and social networking to market our clients rental properties. Today I finally broke down and added something I’ve been considering for a while…and I’m going to test it to see if it yeilds any noticable results. This new fangled technology isn’t very new by web standards but it’s new to me — it’s call TwitPic and it allows me to post photos to the web that can be viewed on the TwitPic site — but it also automatically adds the photo to my tweets as a URL so that people can see the listing.

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As the chief developer of my real estate company’s marketing plan for our customers’ rental property, I am always looking for additional ways to cost effectively market a house, townhome or condo to the largest possible (and most relevant) audience.  Starting early this year I began testing a variety of social media and social networking sites.  You can click to see some of the services and sites I use like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and more.

If you’re not familiar with social networking on the web, I found a pretty basic but good web site that explains social networking fairly well.  If you’re a more visual person, do a search on “Social Networking” on YouTube and you’ll find a mixed bag of videos that visually explain how they work.

One of the interesting things I’ve found over the past several months is that there is an uncanny interest in the unusual on the web.  For example, if I comment about a property that is in an upper price bracket — lots of people click to see it.  It seems like everyone suffers from that “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” influence and has to see what an expensive home looks like.  If I simply post “here’s a new listing…” I get very little response (especially since my mom died).  But if I can find something unique and/or interesting about a property and highlight that single feature — people tend to click the link and look at the property.

Let’s face it, though, this kind of traffic isn’t particularly targeted unless you’ve got an audience of renters following your every online move.  And that’s the toughest part of the equation.  How do you get potential renters to want to follow you online and look to you for their housing solution?

I have some very basic methods that I’m just now starting to employ.  I’ll blog about my efforts in future posts.  I’d be very interested to see if others have comments or questions about social networking and how it relates to marketing houses — or any product for that matter.

I know…I know the title of this post sounds like I could be Hollywood Star getting ready for my next role.  But I’m actually referring to my www.RentalsGuy.com blog site.

After a couple of months of being dormant, I decided to clean up the interface and bring in more in line with my company web site at www.MNRentalHouses.com.  You’ll see that the graphics here are similar to the company web site.  I figured that since both sites are heavily related to one another that I’d make the look a little more similar.  Besides, the old theme I was using was in use by THOUSANDS of others and it just didn’t look very original.

I’ll post again very soon, but I just wanted to let anyone who’s on an RSS feed know that I haven’t abandoned this site and I’ll begin faithfully posting here with insights, commentary and helpful hints for rental property owners.

If you have a spare moment I’d really appreciate your feedback on the new look.  If you notice any anomolies, please let me know which web browser and operating system you’re using so I can track down the source of the problem.  Since switching to a MacBook I now have the ability to troubleshoot both Mac and Windows browsers pretty easily…but I’m not always as diligent as I should be.

Thanks!

I’ve flat out ignored this blog for the past month (okay, month PLUS). Since my last post, I left Rentals.com and have started my own venture as a property management and leasing company here in the Twin Cities. I’m working with 2 other people - Barbara Wickstrand and Matt Jerome…both very capable leasing agents. It’s been my job to set up our web presence - including a Joomla-based web site that we just converted to Wordpress as well as a couple of different blogs about the industry.

Now that the bulk of getting those sites online and optimized has started to roll to completion, I should be able to find more time to write at this blog.

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Judging by the news headlines, you’d think the sky had fallen and swallowed up every last homeowner who had ever seen a mortgage broker in the past 5 years. The newspapers, tv and radio folks are eager to share the bad news with you…to convince you that life as we knew is over and that we need a Henry Fonda-esqe foil to feel the Wrath.

According to a RealtyTrac report released on February 13th, the bad news is that Minneapolis forclosure rates have skyrocketed. Nearly 150% (146.81 to be precise). A 150% increase in foreclosures is nothing to be happy or excited about (unless you plan on snapping them up at auction!), but what does this actually translate in to as a portion of the entire market? Read the rest of this entry »

Where is Part I you might ask? Actually, I just ripped this title off from Scott Ficek because I loved his pithy remarks on the subject. I just finished reading his blog post titled “The Secret for Getting Future Tenants to Call - Even when you are NOT advertising.”

Given that I work in the rental property marketing business, when I first saw the title, I thought, “Wow…I bet he’s going to talk about advertising online. About how web ads like those on Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com stay out there for weeks floating around in Google’s cache.

The first sentence, however, stated that he had not been advertising for about 30 days. 30 days is a LONG time for online ads to hang around…maybe I was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

In the immortal words of Kernighan and Ritchie, “Hello World”.

I’ve been putting off creating this blog for 57,000 (give or take) reasons. I can’t find the right template, I don’t have the right content yet, my dog ate my keyboard…and so on. I just decided to “do it”. So here goes…

My name is John Hage and I’m the “RentalsGuy” because I am an Account Executive for a division of Primedia known as Rentals.com and, well, I’m a guy. Hence the term Rentals-Guy. In my position, I work with Minnesota real estate investors, property managers, landlords and anyone else who has rental property in the state of Minnesota that needs vacancies filled.

Rentals.com and it’s sister site RentalHouses.com are the 2 most trafficked sites in the U.S. for renters who are searching for single-family properties like houses, townhomes and condominiums. I help my customers place really nice and extremely detailed ads online that help generate tenant leads.

I am a licensed (non-practicing) Minnesota real estate broker with several years of online marketing experience. So I tend to bring an extra level of support and knowledge than the typical “salesperson” and this blog is just one of the many ways I will be communicating with my customers and/or potential future customers. I will provide tips & hints about how to use Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com as well as other useful.

I’m a huge nerd. I love technology and I want to share my knowledge with others in the Minnesota rental house industry. At times, some of my posts may be a bit geeky but don’t worry if you’re not a “techie” yourself because I can usually translate nerd-speak into plain English fairly well.

I hope that with your feedback and comments we can learn and share tips that makes everyone more successful.