Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Concentrated as we are in selling a specific house or “making a deal” in our own market, we easily lose sight of the major factors that can make all the difference between fighting every day for a result and growing an healthy real estate business. Real estate is local by definition and therefore you need to know your backyard well or you need to have means to cover multiple markets by serving a specific type of client. In the last couple of days I have met a Realtor who is specialized in dealing with customers from Australia and who has managed with his firm to close one deal a day in the last few weeks and there seems no end in the supply of cash he is getting from overseas.

Capital flow is a key factor in US real estate right now.

He did a very good work in creating the relationship of course and is very diligent in procuring the types of properties that his clients ask from him, but would you like to be in his same position? Well you need to be familiar with the global forces that impact your local market and that can dictate whether you should stay there or change market altogether.

The first and foremost of this force is called “capital flow” and it is intimately connected with international real estate. Capital flow is not only currency exchange and the transferring of cash from one nation to another in order to buy goods, it can also involve the transfer of assets, capital goods (machinery or goods used in producing something else), debt and credit.

Therefore we see India, that has been receiving a very strong flow of capital from the US for outsourcing activities, that is now sending some of this cash back to the US purchasing cash flow producing properties at a discount price. We also see international investors purchasing notes (debt) or Canadian investors leveraging credit in their own country, that gives loans at only 2.5 % of interest, and use it to buy cash deals in the US.

North American real estate is for sale and somebody is definitely going to buy it at very discounted prices as a long or short term investment using strong currencies or even better weak currencies that get converted into dollars.

According to a research published by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate, the United States are the country that today offers the most stable and secure real estate investment environment:

http://www.afire.org/foreign_data/2009/3.shtm

Of course you must know what you are doing otherwise you will still lose money, and that’s why you should combine your local market or multi-market knowledge with attention to capital flow forces around you to become the specialist that is able to direct them and profit from them.

Roberto Mazzoni