3 Ways You Can Use Social Media to Grow Your Real Estate Brand

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Social media plays an integral role in the real estate industry in 2019. Real estate professionals are reliant on social media to promote property listings and the various services they offer. A strong social media presence can help grow your real estate company brand. Keep reading and discover a few tips on how you can take advantage of social media to strengthen your brand.

Host contests

People love participating in contests over the internet. If you want to generate excitement via social media, consider hosting a few contests over your social media channels. For example, run a contest where your followers have a chance to win a gift card if they like your page and leave a comment. You may also want to think about doing regular giveaways, so people check back into your social media pages routinely. By doing so, not only are you helping to grow your social following, you are creating more opportunities to build your brand.

Demonstrate your commitment to the community

What kind of involvement do you have within the local communities? One of the best ways to grow your brand via social media is to show your ties to the community. You can do this in a variety of ways, such as sponsoring a local charity, organizing fun events, or participating in fundraisers. Buyers and sellers want to see that you are a committed professional before they hire you to represent them.

Showcase properties with live streaming

Did you know social media channels like Facebook and Instagram have live-streaming capabilities? This makes these social media platforms incredibly useful tools for showcasing property listings. Many agents today create virtual open houses on their homes to generate more interest from potential buyers.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.