Posts

Showing posts from August, 2015

How to write listing descriptions that sell.

Image
Pictures may well be worth a thousand words, but in real estate a well-written listing description could seal the deal. The Basics Even if your listing is a bargain you should be shouting about, avoid typing in all capital lettering. The simple reason for that is THAT TYPING IN ALL CAPS MAKES READERS FEEL LIKE YOU ARE YELLING AT THEM - and no one likes being yelled at. In fact, a study done by the Wall Street Journal had shown that 41% of readers who were faced with a description typed in all caps ignored the entire listing. Always make sure your listings are error free - it happens to the best of us and while it is not the end of the world, it reflects badly on your listing at the end of the day. A quick spell and grammar check will greatly enhance your descriptions and will make it easier for people to read. It has a roof, a kitchen and bedrooms.... When it comes to describing a property it can be very hard to come up with the right words that will pique a

Leading real estate agency from Pikeberg launches new website.

Image
The Jack of all trades in the real estate business in the West Coast, Proterra Properties , just launched their brand new Elegant Themed Flex Website .  This long standing and valued client of Entegral Technologies specialises in the marketing of almost every type of property that you can think of.  From residential to commercial to agricultural property and developments, they have an array of these property types available for buyers looking to buy property in areas like Piketberg , Morreesburg , Hopefield , Koringberg , Laingsburg , Malmesbury , Porterville and various other areas in the Western Cape . Apart from selling all kinds of residential property like houses, townhouses, apartments and holiday homes, they position themselves in the market as leaders in the selling of agricultural property like wheat, irrigation, wine, vegetable, potato, fruit, citrus, sheep, cattle and game farms.   www.proterra.co.za By combining our Office Management System and our Flex

Default area selection on new property listing capture & Advanced search enhancements

Image
DEFAULT AREA SELECTION When you load a new property listing, it will use the area from your last property captured. We corrected a bug that prevented the system from remembering this info. ADVANCED SEARCH ENHANCEMENTS You are now able to optionally show property photos in the advanced search as per the quick search function: You can also apply additional filters (as per quick search) to filter on column fields:

OMS Quick search – new filter & Microsoft Edge update

Image
NEW FILTER You can now filter for properties listed in the last 24 hours in the OMS property quick search:   MICROSOFT EGDE BROWSER The OMS was tested on Microsoft’s new Windows 10 browser, called Edge . We can confirm that Microsoft’s new browser is a great improvement over the old Internet Explorer. Response times are great and very similar tot Google Chrome , and works fine with all OMS functions.

Improved profile photo uploader

Image
An improved profile photo uploader is now available in the OMS. It has also been updated to correct a problem in the latest Chrome browser version. Simply head over to the ‘my profile’ section in the OMS setup, click on the update photo link, choose a profile photo from your computer, crop it to the correct aspect ratio and upload.

Flex newsletters update – safeguard against old news

Image
Flex real estate newsletters provides a smart way of reaching clients on a regular basis by providing them with a weekly branded email containing the latest news and property listings. The latest update safeguards old news from reaching your clients. It will automatically exclude news articles from the newsletter that are older than 30 day. Our advice is to load at least one new article per week – not only will you increase the click through rate on your newsletters, but since they also appear on your website, it is great for SEO purposes to achieve a higher ranking in the search engines.

Online marketing tools to help you streamline your real estate business

Image
Smartphones and tablets have changed the way we interact with the world around us, we are no longer bound to a desk and this has subsequently changed the way we do business. As a real estate agent, the value of engaging with your clients can never be underestimated, and in this fast paced world there are a few ways you can do just that easily and effectively. Here are a list of tools that you can use to make communicating with your buyers and sellers easier. 1. MailChimp Newsletters remain a great way to inform your clients about the latest news from your agency, property related news and of new property listings on the market. Platforms such as MailChimp can collect and manage your contacts, send targeted emails to segments created from your lists. Mailchimp also allows you design your own branded newsletter that you can track based on performance, meaning that you will be able to see how many people opened your newsletter, how many bounced or how many weren’t op

Property library size doubled for all OMS users

Image
The OMS makes it easy to store all property related documents directly on the property listings. Even if you archive the listings, the files with all other property info are kept intact, securely in the cloud. There is no limit on the number of files you can upload, limits are imposed on the total of all file sizes saved on all listings. The OMS property library allows you to save files and links for either internal or external use on individual property listings : You can even share files securely with clients or fellow colleagues: Files that are uploaded to properties and marked as ‘external’ will automatically become available on your website for visitors to download: We have now increased the property library size for all users by +- 50%. E.g. Venture package users had 1GB of space previously and now have 2GB of space available on their property listings, at no additional fee. Have a look a the OMS packages for the new property library sizes: http://www.entegral.net/con

OMS Quick Search: group by agent, complex or street name

Image
With the OMS quick search function, you can quickly view and filter for your property listings. It also provides functionality to group your listings by fields, simply by dragging-and-dropping the column field name into the group header section: You can now also group your quick search view by agent, complex or street name. This allows a better view of your data, for instance, you may want to filter for all listings loaded in the last 30 days and then group it by agent. Or perhaps group by street and get a consolidated view of listings by street and suburb. Example grouping screenshots are provided below: 1) Agent Name   2) Complex Name 3) Street Name

New improved Virtual Tour Viewer now works on all devices

Image
With the OMS you can create your own unlimited virtual tours for all your properties, at no additional cost. With the latest upgrade, the viewer was upgraded to the latest HTML5 technology ensuring your virtual tours will load on all devices including the latest tablets and phones. You still only need a digital camera and tripod and stitching software to create them – so get started with virtual tours here . If you load virtual tours on property listings, a virtual tour button will display on the listing (if your website is hosted through Entegral). Virtual tour panoramic images can these days be created with various free or purchased software, and can easily be uploaded in the virtual tour section on property listings. Each panoramic image you upload presents a scene – users will be able to select this from a dropdown on the viewer. Best of all? It is unlimited and free if you have an OMS account. Click on the photos below to open sample virtual tours for 2 different properties:

Having a real estate website alone won’t get you on top of Google’s search results

Image
It is easy to get a website these days. You can get a new Flex responsive real estate website from Entegral set up in a flash. But having a website alone won’t get you to the #1 spot in search engines like Google. Many years ago, stuffing your pages with keywords worked, now it is frowned upon by Google. It is content that works – good unique and frequently posted content. Here is how you can get higher position in the organic search results depending on your focus:   1) Your are an area specialist If you are an area specialist, like Retha van Zyl properties in Bloemfontein , you have the advantage of focusing on one or a couple of areas, and all your content will be highly targeted on this area. This actually makes it a bit easier to rank higher if you frequently add or update content, as all your keywords will be focussed on that area. Make sure you have a unique home and about us page and post regular news articles about your area. Supplement this with an article about your

New Private Property interface and online marketing improvements

Image
A brand new Private Property interface is now live and is complemented with a cleanup and tweaks on the online marketing section of the OMS property details: Updates to Private Property is now smoother & faster - you can expect listings to update in under 5 min. Error reporting is also better and offices or groups can now choose whether they want the Private Property portals including FNB and Nedbank mandates to be user selectable or to be checked by default. The new interface will now also scale better under increased load, has better failover protection and was designed from the ground up to run more cost effective on our real estate cloud infrastructure . Over the next few days we will make tweaks to the interface and also monitor it closely for any problems.

Flex search price updates

Image
New options are now available for the minimum and maximum price dropdowns on your Flex powered real estate website . We have adjusted the ranges plus additional R10m to R80m+ options will automatically become available if you have any listings in that price range, as per sample below.