Posts

Showing posts from March, 2017

Is Virtual Reality the new frontier in real estate marketing?

Image
Virtual Reality (VR) is poised to take marketing by storm in 2017 - and while you might not think that it has a role to play in real estate marketing, we beg to differ. The Stats Gone are the days where only tech geeks with deep pockets could afford VR technology, with the latest advancements it has become accessible to the masses. The latest statistics reveal that 30% of Forbes Global 2000 consumer-facing companies will experiment with augmented and virtual reality this year. Companies such as Matterport uses 3D Showcase to "bring listings to life" - their 360° panoramic tours lets buyers actually move through a property as if they were really there. With this technology at your fingertips, you are creating an on show day for visitors to your listings without them having to leave their sofas. This is the perfect solution for home buyers from out-of-town or even from another country that cannot attend a show day easily. Peter Lorimer of PLG Estates , recently

Why your outdated website is hurting you more than you think

Image
You might not think that your website has a large impact on your business but you would be wrong - perception matters and outdated websites could spell trouble for your real estate business. An outdated website - which includes not having a responsive website - creates a negative perception of your business. We take a look at some of these perceptions and how you could address the issues before they affect your bottom line. They are going out of business An outdated website creates the perception that your real estate business is going out of business - this goes as far as updated news or press releases displayed on your website. If you have old news or press releases on your website, customers are going to think that you are either going out of business or even worse that you are already out of business. Luckily, with Entegral’s Office Management System (OMS) you can easily load news and press releases that will feed to your website. You can even schedule the news so you don

#OMS_QuickTip: Adding teams

Image
The Office Management System (OMS) allows you to market listings under multiple agents as a team on Property24, Private Property and your Flex powered responsive website . Follow this easy how-to guide on setting up a new team on your OMS dashboard: How to set up teams for your office: Log in to the OMS and go to Setup / My Office / Office Members;  Click on the new 'teams' tab;  Click on 'new team';  Enter a team name e.g. 'John and Sandy' and press save. Note the team name won't appear on any external websites, it is for internal OMS use only;  Now add the team members How to link teams on listings: Open the property listing by entering the reference number on the dashboard or opening the listing via the Quick Search view;  Under the listing/rental/auction agent you will notice a new 'Listing Team' field;  Simply select the team you want to link to this listing and press save;  The listing will update to external portals, with the new team as agen

Tips on how to align your real estate brand on social media

Image
You are marketing your content and listings on social media but what more can social media do for your real estate business? The answer - BRANDING. We take a look at how to use branding on social media to promote your business. With so many real estate franchises and independent agencies using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn it is easy to become lost in all the noise if you don’t have a strong brand presence. As a franchise you are already geared towards using brand presence to your advantage if you know how, but independent agencies shouldn’t feel discouraged - building your brand online is easier than you think with these tips. There are three basic tips: stick to brand colours, maintain consistency, leverage cover photos. Stick to brand colours As mentioned before, franchises come with the advantage of already having a brand identity which includes a colour scheme. Now it might seem a little trivial but colours are the most important part of your social me

#OMS_QuickTip - Adding new users

Image
Is your real estate business growing? Need to add new users on your Office Management System (OMS)? Then our Quick Tip of the day is just for you! Firstly new users can only be added by users with Office Administrator / Organisation Manager access, it is also worth mentioning that a user with the same email address can not be created twice on the OMS System. Once you have logged into your account you can add new users in the 'My Office' tab using the wizard available! Head to our help file for a step-by-step guide: How to add new users on the OMS 

Photography tips for real estate agents

Image
A picture really is worth a 1000 words - but depending on the quality of a real estate photograph it could be what helps you sell a property or lose out on a potential client. We take a look at some tips to help you get the best photographs for your next listing: Go wide If you can invest in a wide angle camera lense do it - this allows you to capture the full essence of the space. If however, a new lense is outside of your budget then take a step back and capture as much of the room in one photograph. 1. Invest in a wide angle camera lens to emphasize space and create a sense of depth. Compose Your Pictures to Emphasize Space and Natural Light Space and natural light are two qualities that home buyers are always looking for. We recommend keeping space and natural light in mind when composing your pictures. Horizontal or portrait?  Shoot your photographs in the horizontal or landscape orientation whenever possible.The human eye sees the world in a roughly a 4:3 aspect

Shine a light on your neighbourhood

Image
For most home buyers finding a property to buy in an area is a daunting task - this gets even trickier for out-of-town home buyers that are not familiar with the area at all - fill the gap and boost your reputation as an area specialist by writing posts about an area for your Entegral powered website . Write what you know Don't just focus on the property numbers - write about the lifestyle of the area. Is it a quiet neighbourhood or an up-and-coming hotspot of the young and cool? If you are focussing on a family friendly area write about the schools and sporting clubs in the area, if you are however focusing on an area that is popular with students mention transport connections, the walkability of the neighbourhood or places where they can get a quick bite to eat. If writing is not your thing you can always make a neighbourhood video or take photos and pair it with a short description of the area. By doing this you are not just boosting your offline reputation as an are

#OMS_QuickTip: Manage your leads better

Image
Whether you are running your own real estate business or part of a team , one of the most important aspects of your daily business should be communicating with new and current leads. Unanswered queries on listings can potentially cost you a sale and with the amount of paperwork that real estate agents have to work through on a daily basis it is easy to see how you could lose track of leads - however, with Entegral's Office Management System productivity boosting features are built in! One of these awesome features is our lead consolidation  feature. Queries from your own website and MyProperty automatically imports into your OMS inbox but did you know you can also import from external portals like Property24, Private Property, IOL Property and ImmoAfrica into your OMS inbox? This means that all your leads are in ONE place - all you have to do is take a few minutes every day to answer your leads without having to jump from one inbox to another!

How to write a real estate blog that will attract sellers

Image
How many times have you heard that content is king? Enough for it to become an adage much like 'location, location, location' - but how do you write a blog post that is not just work for you but will also work for you ? Follow these tips to help you craft a post that will attract the right audience: Be informative Be an influencer when writing by remaining factual and representative of your local community. You are not just educating your potential buyers you are also attracting interested sellers who will want to work with someone that has local property market knowledge and is invested in the area. Shine a light on yourself Many people will decide whether or not they want to work with an agent before even meeting them in person - this all boils down to the personality you exude online. Is your blog post filled with facts and no personality? That could be a deterrent for some - inject some ingredient you into the posts to keep it fresh. Gear it towards

New Property Heading/Title feature in the OMS

Image
Property details in the OMS now has a new heading/title field allowing you to provide up to 250 characters of descriptive text for a property listing: Once saved, allow some time for it to pull through to selected portals, we currently support the heading field in Property24 and will cater for other portals and Flex websites soon where supported:

Price per square meter support for commercial rentals

Image
The OMS now supports a gross price per square meter indicator for commercial property rentals. This is pulled through to selected portals including Property24. 1. Simply enter your gross rental price/sqm on the mandate as you normally do: 2.Mark prices as 'gross price/square meter' on the commercial section of the listing features: 3. Once saved allow time for it to update to portals, here is a Property24 example:

You can now save unlimited files on properties with the OMS

Image
With our revamped OMS packages you can now save an unlimited amount of internal and external files on your OMS property records. This was previously capped but with the latest revamp it has become uncapped. This allows you to truly take control of your business and go paperless no matter what OMS package you use. You can see the all the updated packages and what they offer here: Entegral OMS Packages Here is how you can add files to your listings: Remember that you can also add virtual tours and links to enhance your listing - here is how: OMS helpfile

Hozi Homes no longer a free portal to new clients

Image
Hozi Homes has always formed part of our free portal partners that we feed property data to for advertising on behalf of our real estate clients.   During the month of March 2017, they confirmed that this portal will no longer offer free advertising.  All current clients already advertising stock on Hozi Homes will still enjoy the benefit of free advertising for the time being but, unfortunately, new sign on's will be approached by their sales team and offered either a 6 or 12-month contract deal to advertise on this portal.  This will apply to clients either listing through the OMS or making use of the Sync Syndication service. Clients already advertising on Hozi Homes will also be approached in due time and given the option to continue advertising on this portal at a fee or to cancel their current feed from Entegral Technologies' Sync service . Thus please be aware, that all clients who signed on during the month of February or March will no longer have th

Marketing your properties on Gumtree

Image
Recent statistics revealed that Gumtree is South Africa’s second most visited website with more than 5 million unique browser visitors. Who wouldn’t want to get their business that type of exposure? Entegral clients can not only list properties from their OMS (Office Management System) , and have them published automatically to South Africa's #1 classifieds website but can also integrate our industry-leading Sync API into their own management system to publish their listings to Gumtree (and other property portals) It is also worth noting that more than half of the visitors used mobile devices to visit Gumtree - another statistic showing that mobile browsing is taking over the market. Our Flex responsive technology will allow you to have a real estate website that will adapt to any device it is browsed from which eliminates the need for an extra mobile website - saving you money! Did we mention responsive websites are also better for your SEO ? Contact us today to

Automate your real estate agency with the new OMS Zapier app

Image
We are excited to announce the beta release of the OMS Zapier web automation app as part of our new OMS Integrations .  The new OMS Zapier app connects your OMS data to all your favorite apps and can help you automate just about anything in your real estate business.  What is Zapier? Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect apps you use every day to automate tasks and save time. You can connect the OMS to any of Zapier’s 750+ integrated apps together to make your own automations. What’s more it’s quick and easy to set up – you don’t need to be a developer, anyone can make a Zap! Triggers can be created for when a new agent, contact or property is added, and you can create notes on properties as actions. Connect the OMS to automate tasks with all your favourite apps! Learn more about Zapier here  and here . What can you do with the OMS Zapier app? You can create triggers and tasks that can automatically send your OMS data to the app of your choice, or send data back. This includes: 1