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Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a multi-faceted concept which is aimed at building a positive online public opinion of an organization, brand, or individual. This form of reputation management essentially includes addressing any customer feedback or adverse content that can damage the brand, developing and maintaining positive online content, and using proactive strategies to address … Continue reading Online Reputation Management – a way to look after your brand in 2021

The post Online Reputation Management – a way to look after your brand in 2021 appeared first on VSMA | Legal Matters | The Law | Confirm Them | Law Firms.

Man, sincerely, this is hot as hell and nuts. I dont care if you’re into food play or not Well i was feeling hungry and horny so i decided to get a little naughty with a bannana, chocolate syrup and some whip cream! I covered the bannana with my other goodies and [...]

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by Mike Carraway, Access Realty, Birmingham, AL

A LOT of sellers want to price their home above the market value and they do it for a variety of reasons...

Some say they want to have "negotiating room". Some say, "we can always come down later". And others say, "we just want to see what we can get - you know - test the market."

Theses are all good reasons from a seller's point of view. They aren't, however, from a property marketing standpoint. When you put a property on the market, you want to generate the highest traffic and demand in the shortest time possible and all of these so called reasons to overprice just hinder and impede the marketing process.

Danger #1

Pricing a home above the market value usually results in people going elsewhere and buying. They may love your home but if you have a similar product in your market for a lower price, they'll buy it - not yours. In effect, you have missed your buyer and now you will have to wait and attract another one at a later date.

Danger #2

Traffic and lots of it is what sells a home. Without human bodies walking through your home, it doesn't matter if it's the best deal around or the most beautiful in your neighborhood - it still won't sell. In order to get the most traffic possible in the shortest time, the price must be right from the very beginning. If the home is priced very near what you actually think it will sell for, you will get the most traffic - and offers.

Danger #3

Your home will sit on the market while YOUR buyers go buy other homes. You will have lower traffic due to the higher price and fewer people will be exposed to it. What happens when you finally decide to lower the price? People see the price reduction and it causes a couple of thoughts...

1) I wonder how much further down they will come?
2) I wonder if something is wrong with it?
3) I wonder how long it's been for sale?

Just these three will cause you more suffering from low offers and constant questions about whether you will carry part of the financing or not. You will soon grow tired of it.

The best way to avoid ALL of these problems, especially in a buyers market as we are in right now, is to price your home AT the market. Not a little over but right at the market value.

Want a secret? Price your home slightly UNDER the market value. You will have people fighting over it and will probably receive multiple offers. When you do - you can actually start a bidding war of sorts over your home and may even realize MORE than the market value.

by Mike Carraway, Broker, Access Realty, Birmingham, AL 800-840-0165

The internet is all the rage when it comes to real estate. According to the National Association of Realtors, when a buyer starts thinking of buying, the first place they turn is the internet. Just 10 years ago - it was getting in the car and driving around.

With gasoline prices approaching $3 a gallon, more and more people will search online first before they do any driving.

So - if you are an agent or a seller, how do you get your property noticed online?

Let's talk about being an agent first. If you are with a national franchise and/or your company is affiliated with the local board of Realtors, there is a good chance that your listings will get streamed to Realtor.com. Relator.com is the #1 property search engine in the world and just keeps getting bigger and better. The site is ranked by Alexa.com as the #8 site - in the WORLD. That's pretty big. Real estate agents already have this site in their favor.

As a home seller, you do not have such an advantage. You can either buy into one of the FSBO (For Sale By Owner) products out there that will put your home on the internet for you, or you can put up your own site and sales page for your home. Of course, if someone is searching for a home in your area, and your site doesn't come up on the first page or two of the major search engines, no one will ever see it.

With people shopping more online and doing less driving around, it puts todays home sellers (those selling without an agent) at a pretty big disadvantage. If they would list their home with an agent whose company has a popular internet presence, their home would sell a lot faster because of the increased exposure.

Our company site is such a site. If you go to Google and search on "Birmingham Alabama Homes for Sale", you will see that the Access Realty site comes in at #3 or #4 on the first page. That's a huge advantage for anyone who wants to sell a home in Birmingham.

One other way to sell a home is to generate a large roster of interested buyers. This can be accomplished online by setting up what are called mini-sites designed to capture llists of people who are currently in the market for a home. This works great for real estate agents but may not work so well with a seller of just one home. You can get more information on these mini-sites and how to accomplish this HERE. As I said before, this type of buyer generation works extremely well these days because almost everyone shops online before getting in the car and driving around looking for homes.

Almost any source you looki at will tel you that between 80% and 90% of For Sale By Owners will eventually list their home with a real estate agent. There are a myriad of reasons why this happens but it all boils down to this: agents have the inside track on attracting buyer traffic to the home. They also do it full time so that even when the seller is gone to work, the house is still "for sale" and can be shown.

So, if you find yourself thinking of hiring an agent, which one should you hire?

First of all, consider paying the highest price for a good agent. Interview several of them and then ask them to cut their fee. The one that refuses to is probably your best bet. Why? When it comes to selling your home and getting your proce, you want an agent who is NOT a noodle...someone with a little back bone. If they won't cut their fee and they promise a higher level of service and service quality, then they will also negotiate the hardest in the trenches when people are trying to cut your price on your home.

Second: if the agent you call doesn't answer their phone or call back within a half hour - stop trying to get them. If they don't answer or call back when you try to call them for an interview, what makes you think they will answer calls from buyers for your home?

Lastly, when you are doing the interview and listening to the agent's marketing plan, look for the things that are different. If you talk to 2 agents and they pretty much do the same things... a sign, MLS, and a few ads... keep talking to more agents. What you are looking for is the agent who has a unique approach or ads value by adding unique tools. Agents that use the talking house transmitter or a 24 hour hotline system are some examples. If the agent you hire isn't doing extra things to make your home stand out in the marketplace, you are just going to get the same ole, same ole. Look for something different.

I hear this questions a lot in the daily real estate game, "can you give us part of our fee back after the closing?"

The answer is yes but only if done in a certain way.

RESPA, the Real Estate Settlement Procdures Acts, requires a couple of things that need to be mentioned. The first thing is that payment cannot be made for services not performed. The second one is that if any payments are made, they must be disclosed on the HUD-1 Settlement Statement.

Futher, Alabama License Law, and most states License Laws, require that no "rebate" be made to any party in a real estate transaction from another party. Another section of the code also requires that the TRUE terms of a real estate transaction be diclosed to the lender or lending institution.

What does all this mean? For starters, if your agent says they can give you cash back after the closing, in nearly every case, this is both against case law and the license law governing the licensees in your state. So - in short - don't do it. If you are a participant in a transaction and you recieve cash back later, after the closing takes place, then you are participating in loan fraud. Fraud is a crime. Because the lender didn't know that you were receiving additional cash proceeds from the sale, they are not aware of the TRUE details of the transaction. Alomst every loan program for the purchase of a home has the provision that the buyer cannot receive what is called "cash out" - that is - get money back when they make a purchase. This, in essence, would be overfinancing the home. on a refinance, however, this is okay.

The way to get a credit back from your agent is to have the credit put on the settlement statement as a CREDIT to you and then the credit is applied to any costs you have to pay at the closing table. This applies whether you are buying or selling.

Basic Rule of them: If you can put the cash payment on the HUD-1 settlement statement so that it is disclosed to all parties, including the lender, chances are it's AOK to do it.

By Joe Klock, Sr.

Real estate analysts (and what American is not among them these days?) tend to survey the sea of sale signs in most areas and join the gloomy headline writers who conclude that there are not enough ready, willing and able buyers in the market place.

Not so, gentle reader! The shortfall is among sellers, of which there are relatively few treading water in the aforementioned sea.
"Whoa, Nellie!" you might exclaim (ignoring the by-line clearly displayed above), "any fool, including the by-lined fool, can see that it's buyers that are now in short supply."
In so doing, you might cite the hordes of hungry house-hunters who roamed the house-hunting roadways during the many months of a recently-deceased feeding frenzy, fueled by mortgage lenders with deep pockets and all the fiscal restraint of sailors on leave.
It is a now a fact of real estate life in most areas that their numbers - and that financial fuel - have shrunk like last month's birthday balloons, and it's true that there are fewer prospective buyers rummaging through the current logjam of listings.
Enter the law (not the theory or fantasy) of supply and demand, which dictates that when the number of consumers is dwarfed by a surplus of products, either prices take a hit or activity takes a holiday.
That reality underpins my contention that, while there may be too many homes for sale, there are too few legitimate sellers offering them.
This position is backed up by more than a half-century of experience on and behind the firing line of real estate brokerage, during which I have seen and survived several cycles of inflation, deflation and stagflation, as well as so-called sellers' markets which morphed into buyers' markets and vice versa.
Through all that trauma, certain facts remained unchanged - facts that are being ignored by too many would-be sellers and, sadly, pseudo-professionals. They are as follows:
1. No home in history has ever sold for a penny more than the best offer obtainable from the best buyer available in the then-current market.
2. The only way to determine the true value of a home is to thoroughly and aggressively test the market and challenge the competition. That process need not be a lengthy one, since buyers and their agents do comparison shopping and readily react to an attractive offering.
3. Once that procedure has been pursued, properties remaining unsold for an extended period of time are, quite simply, overpriced. Forget about what similar houses sold for in the past (which is history), or what those would-be sellers might have invested in their homes (which is irrelevant), or what qualified appraisers say they are worth (which are only opinions). The critical test is exposing one's home to the greatest practical number of prospective buyers and active agents, and then analyzing the results.
4. A home that is appropriately priced and effectively marketed, preferably by competent professionals, will ALWAYS attract attention, generate activity and ALWAYS sell for what it's worth (refer to Fact #1 above).
The problem today is not that there are too few buyers. Demand is what it is and neither wishful thinking nor wistful memories will increase its size.
The more serious shortage is of genuine sellers; i.e., those who meet these specific criteria:
a) They are willing and able to accept the best price obtainable from the best buyer available in the current market, and
b) They have something to lose if they don't do so.
"Sellers" who do not fit that mold are not sellers at all and should be encouraged to take their properties off the market. (Realistically, they're not actually ON the market, anyway!)
The market is not always kind, but it is never wrong - and those who believe otherwise pay a heavy price for ignoring "The Facts Of Life For Home Sellers."
FOOTNOTE: For a further dose of this perhaps-unpleasant medicine, visit www.joeklock.com and click on that caption. You have nothing to lose - except, maybe, a pipe dream.
If that doesn't work for you, take two antacids or a short snort and DON'T call me in the morning!
Here's the bottom line - take it to the bank or to any nearby Wailing Wall: When proper pricing is combined with effective marketing, there is a buyer for everything and, given those conditions, any home can be sold in any market.
The ritual dances of negotiation may change with market fluctuations, but the drumbeat of reality does not!

Mike Carraway
Broker/Owner

WEICHERT, REALTORS - Access Realty
1100 East Park Drive, Suite 104
Birmingham, AL 35235
1-800-840-0165
WEICHERT, REALTORS - Access Realty
Valleydale Branch
4500 Valleydale Road, Suite 160
Birmingham, AL 35242
205-995-3939
24/hr Info: 800-634-0511
24/hr Fax: 800-634-0511
www.Access1000.com
www.Weichert.com
www.AlabamaWebPage.com
www.TakeOurTest.com
www.BirminghamRealEstateSchool.com

(Birmingham, AL) The most recent fallout from the mortgage crisis that began last summer is now rearing it's ugly head in the form of Fannie Mae approved loans that cannot get insured by Mortgage Insurance companies.

Mortgage insurance companies, spurred on by recent recommendations in congress, are tightening their credit standards for providing insurance. Without mortgage insurance, borrowers are forced to provide a down payment equal to 20% of the purchase price of a home - something very few home buyers can afford to do. Just this past week, mortgage insurance companies raised their credit score requirement to 620, effectively cutting out 50% of home buyers from the home buying market. The move came unnanounced and without any notice to lenders or to Fannie Mae.

In fact, lenders are still approving loans that meet Fannie Mae guidelines for purchase in the secondary market, but then find, just before closing, that there is no mortgage insurance available to insure the loan. Without insurance on money loaned that is over 80% of the value of the property, the loan is declined. Buyers that have a "loan approval" from a lender should immediately ask their lender if the lender can get their loan insured. Otherwise, homebuyers could spend hundreds and even thousands in the days leading up to the closing only to find, at the last minute, that loan insurance is not available to them.

This move by the Mortgage Insurance companies will only add fuel to the fire that is the current US Housing market. By effectively eliminating more home buyers from the market, at a time when the housing market needs more buyers, not fewer, the mortgage insurance companies have put another nail in the coffin of the housing market. The resulting effect on the market will be an even bigger drop in home prices. The immediate impact of this new policy will be felt quickly in the market, not over time as has been the case with loan defaults, adjusting loan interest rates, and foreclosures.

Be forewarned: if you are a seller, drop your price now before the market itself forces an even larger price reduction. If you are a home buyer, your credit score must be above 620 or you cannot get a loan.

There are big opportunities for the music industry in podcasts, but one of the big barriers is licensing: the cost and complexity for podcasters of securing the rights to actually play music in their shows.

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Audiobooks and podcasts have been sky-rocketing in popularity over the past three or four years. In 2019, the number of Americans who had listened to an audiobook passed 50%, a first for the medium. Podcasts are also on the rise, with investments from companies like Spotify and Pandora further encouraging a virtious cycle of audience growth and a broadening pool of podcasters.

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The audio technology company Voxnest owns the podcasting platform Spreaker. The Italy-based StreetLib is a digital book distributor. Last week, they teamed up for a symbiotic relationship that will let StreetLib’s book publishers create podcasts and Spreaker’s podcasters create and distribute digital books or audiobooks.

The Publishing And Podcasting Industries Are Getting Even Cozier

Last month, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that there will now be a Pulitzer for audio reporting, further proving that podcasting has become an unignorable cultural force. In the announcement, Pulitzer Administrator Dana Canedy explained that the renaissance of audio journalism in recent years has given rise to an extraordinary array of non-fiction storytelling.

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Last Friday, a group of podcast publishers and related operatives announced the formation of something called the Podcast Academy, which they described as a nonprofit organization dedicated to “elevating awareness and excitement for podcasts as a major media category and advancing knowledge and relationships in and around the business.”

Its various activities will involve things like holding educational webinars, organizing networking events, and publishing white papers. But its flagship endeavor seems to be an awards program to be called the Golden Mics — or, as people are already calling it, the Oscars of podcasting.

Podcasting Is Getting Its Own Oscars. Will It Work?

Starting a podcast is easy. Making one that actually sounds good is another story entirely. We can not help much with the bigger problems facing would-be podcasters -- finding a good topic and getting people to listen -- but we can point you to the best gear to get started. With a few smart purchases, you too can sound like a podcast pro.

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As podcasts continue to grow in popularity, politicians are increasingly using the medium to reach the public without having to go through traditional news media.

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Spotify, the Swedish music and audio streaming giant, has extended its reach further into the growing podcast market with its formal acquisition of the Ringer, a US sports and pop culture platform.

Although Spotify announced the acquisition at the beginning of this month, more details of the deal emerged this week in a filing with the Security and Exchange Commission.

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Advantage: Convenience

With podcasting, you do not have to worry that your audience is busy offline when you make your sales pitch. A listener can download the file and replay it at whatever time is convenient for him, even while jogging or driving to work. If someone chooses to subscribe to your podcast feed, he can get any podcasts of interest downloaded automatically. If you want all your employees to hear what you have to say, podcasting is often easier than trying to get everyone together for one meeting.

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Backtracks functions as a kind of fifth layer in the podcast listening ecosystem, enhancing the RSS feeds basic download-counting abilities with supplemental data from partners and podcast streaming app APIs.

None of that data is rigidly standardized, though. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has attempted to standardize podcast analytics terminology, but, so far, every podcast hosting service and audio analytics software provider counts engagement slightly differently.