via activerain.com

What separates Rich Real Estate Agents from the Poor Real Estate Agents? Check out this awesome infographic and survey from Active Rain. Lots of striking information in this, definitely worth checking out.

Posted via email from megbarberva’s posterous

Megan E. Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, and owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions. With over 10 years of experience working within the real estate industry, Megan and her team Virtual Assistants provide top notch real estate support services such as marketing, lead follow-up, social media, WordPress websites, and more. Megan E Barber is also the creator and author of The BVAS Connection and VA Mommy

Realtor safety concerns are nothing new. Several years ago, when I worked in the front office for a major real estate company, the company had decided to offer self defense classes to their agents which some thought was silly. Since the subject came up, my broker then told me this story:

She was working with these first-time buyers, showing them several properties on the weekends over a few weeks. One Saturday morning, she was setting up a few showing appointments for the day, and called one particular owner-occupied home where a pleasant gentleman answered. He said it was the requested appointment was fine and he would make sure to be out of the home.  

Since this was the first appointment of the day, she decided to get to the property ahead of her clients to preview it herself, open up curtains, turn on lights, etc. When she unlocked and opened the door, about 10 feet in front of her was a man sitting in a chair with a shotgun in his lap, starting straight at her. She quickly apologized for disturbing him, backed away, closed the door, and got in her car. She had her clients meet her at the next property instead.

Now that scary situation turned out to be ok for my former boss, as she was unharmed. But it has stuck in her memory and has always taken extra safety measures ever since.

The news tell us that some agents have not been so lucky.

Last year, two Realtors were found murdered in separate incidents, one found shot in a vacant home he was showing, and one found in burning home.

Back in April, an Iowa Realtor was found murdered at an at a model home open house.

In July, a Tennessee agent was attacked and robbed during a showing appointment.

Just last month, an Oregon broker was targeted in his office and shot by a revenge seeking gunman.

A few weeks ago, northern Ohio agents were warned that a man was calling female agents for evening showing appointments, to possibly lure them into vacant homes and sexually assault them.

The sad list goes on.

Real estate can be a risky industry. Agents can often find themselves traveling alone, meeting with and showing properties to people that they don’t really know well or at all. There’s worries that violence against Realtors is on the rise. And it is not just women that are victimized. (check out his report)

What can you do to keep yourself safe? Though past violent incidents don’t always have a common thread, and there is no way to prevent every crime, agents should certainly take any step necessary to protect themselves.

• Take a self defense or martial arts class.
• Google new prospects prior to initial meetings to sniff out anything fishy if you can.
• Meet them for the first time in a public place, such as your office during business hours.
• Call or text  someone to let them know where you’ll be and who you’ll be with showing properties.
• Use a tool such as Moby, which is a mobile app  for your smartphone that can alert chosen contacts with a need for assistance and also tracks your location. And it’s FREE!

Do what you can to increase your awareness and fine tune your gut instincts. Please stay safe out there!

Megan E. Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, and owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions. With over 10 years of experience working within the real estate industry, Megan and her team Virtual Assistants provide top notch real estate support services such as marketing, lead follow-up, social media, WordPress websites, and more. Megan E Barber is also the creator and author of The BVAS Connection and VA Mommy

Here is the latest collection of great reads from around the web that I think are of benefit to you:

• Stop Trying to Be a Celebrity. Be a Kick Ass Person and REALTOR – Productivity Junkies
• 6 Ways to Measure your Social Media Results – Social Media Examiner
• 5 Simple Tips to Make Your Facebook Business Page More Likeable – InmanNext
• 10 Step Facebook Farming Strategy – InmanNext
• Ten Tools and Technologies You Need to Know About - Inman Next (I use many of them myself)
• What to do when you’ve hit a wall professionally - Agent Genius
• How To Improve Your Facebook Newsfeed - Matthew Ferrara & Company

Megan E. Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, and owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions. With over 10 years of experience working within the real estate industry, Megan and her team Virtual Assistants provide top notch real estate support services such as marketing, lead follow-up, social media, WordPress websites, and more. Megan E Barber is also the creator and author of The BVAS Connection and VA Mommy

Methinks that NAR is taking some great steps in the right direction. This is some exciting stuff in my opinion. I think this is badly needed and hopefully will erase the need for agents to buy into 3rd party aggregators. This should become a truly valuable NAR member benefit… Finally.

Posted via web from megbarberva’s posterous

So what is a BarCamp anyways? According to Wikipedia – BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences (or unconferences) – open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants.

Why should you attend? It’s VIRTUAL! So you have little excuse not to attend. You can attend right from the comfort of your own office, and can even invite a few of your colleagues. It’s a great opportunity to learn about and share great ideas about what’s new real estate marketing, real estate technology, social media and more. And all in a informal webinar sort of way.

And did I mention that it is free? That’s right, it wont’ cost you a thing!

So go and sign up and I hope to see you there!

More info from the VREBC folks…

Educating Real Estate Agents On How To Use Modern Technologies To Better Their Business Will Never Be The Same!

On November 17th, 2009 dozens of the most respected educators in the real estate industry converge to host the first of its kind, Virtual Real Estate BarCamp.

Virtual Real Estate BarCamp is a 1-Day Learning Extravaganza.
From 9am until 4pm PST, three concurrent webinar "rooms" will each host 9 different sessions, for a total of 27 different presentations.
There is something for everyone and everything for someone, and best of all, IT IS FREE and attendance is unlimited!

Click below to:
Register.
Learn more.
See who is coming.
Check out the Session Calendar.
Get sponsorship info.

Attendance is projected to be at least 1000 agents, nationwide.
Do not miss out on being part of this ground-breaking event.

Session topics include:

1. Social Media Risk Management

2. Flickr for Real Estate

3. Developing Your Brand

4. Online Advertising Secrets

5. Facebook for Real Estate

6. WordPress Training

7. Daily Goal Tracking

8. Starting a Real Estate Blog

…and much more, with new sessions being added every day.

And if that wasn\’t cool enough, individuals from around the country are volunteering to host In-Real-Life MeetUps for after the event.
Learn all day, and then meet to have a beer with local participants. This is going to be a blast!

We hope to see you there!