March 2020

A Message from Raj Qsar.
 
First of all, we want to send our support & love during these uncertain times. The global COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most difficult scenarios we’ve had to face as a company, industry, and community. When I started The Boutique, my dream was to develop a culture where everyone is considered family. My intention in doing so was to create something better, not only for our agents, staff, and clients but for our industry as a whole. This dream remains our companies driving force as we move forward each & every day.
 
To our most valued clients, please know that during this time, we will continue to serve you with support, knowledge, and care. Now more than ever, The Boutique family will come together to communicate and collaborate, as we work safely on your behalf.
 
Our agents will remain available, providing online and video conversations, live streaming property tours and sharing updates on all our social media channels. We work in a completely digital office and can manage all documents online. We will pick up food for you, grab groceries for you, drop off medicine for you or just simply call you to check-in. We will continue to monitor the guidelines set forth by our local, state and national governments, as well as our real estate industry associations.
 
We are here to help & support you in every way possible and are committed to providing you with the utmost service and guidance moving forward.
 
On behalf of The Boutique family, we send our love, prayers and best wishes for the health of you and your loved ones. We will get through this, together and come back stronger than ever.
 
Raj Qsar, CEO / Owner
The Boutique Real Estate Group

In the most extreme example, some clients with private jets have begun asking about buying homes on islands and in other isolated areas that they can flee to in case of disaster

As some uber-wealthy homeowners stock up on hand sanitizer and hire cleaners for every showing, others are giving family members power of attorney to ensure a sale in case of quarantine.

The impacts of the coronavirus, the novel respiratory disease that began in China but has spread into an international pandemic with over 140,000 cases around the world confirmed, are just starting to reverberate across the real estate sector. Brokerages have had to close for deep cleaning after some of their agents became exposed to the virus while people in some of the hardest-hit parts of the country are isolating themselves voluntarily and holding off on all buying for the time being.

According to NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, 11 percent of agents surveyed earlier this month saw less buyer traffic while 7 percent reported lower seller traffic thus far.Luxury real estate, which is generally considered to include homes worth between $5 million and $30 million, follows different rules. In 2018, high-end homes sat on the market for an average of 506 days compared to only 80 for an median-priced home. That said, this segment of the industry has not been immune to the fear and financial impact surrounding the novel disease.

Senada Adzem, a Douglas Elliman broker working with homes worth as much as $30 million in Boca Raton and other parts of South Florida, said some of her wealthy clients are especially hesitant to hold showings and require much more detail about who is coming into their home.

“We had to convince the seller to allow us to show and register every person who was coming in,” Adzem, whose eight-agent branch has cancelled all open houses until the outbreak stabilizes, told Inman. “After we were done, they had a cleaning team come in and wipe everything down.”

As a result, Adzem’s team has had to screen whom they show houses to not just by the standard ability to afford the property but also by travel history and whether they are showing any visible signs of illness, such as coughing or a fever. Adzem, who fled the war in Bosnia during the 1990s, said that crises like these cause people of all financial and social classes to panic.

She has been striving not only to reassure her clients but work around their fears. In the most extreme example, some clients with private jets have begun asking her about buying homes on islands and in other isolated areas that they can flee to in case of disaster.

“When people are in a panic mode, they think differently and make a different set of decisions,” she said. “As agents, we have to take it seriously and not just pretend it’s not going to impact our business.”

Still, the outbreak is not impacting all parts of the country equally. Raj Qsar, the CEO of the Boutique Real Estate Group in Orange County, California, said members of his team have held 20 open houses last weekend and have seen them packed with people each time. They have another 15 open houses scheduled for this weekend and do not expect a lot of changes in traffic due to the coronavirus.

This could be due to Orange County being a particularly hot market. In the area, median sales prices rose by 7.2 percent year-over-year in December while sales inventory is down 36 percent. According to Qsar, many people are so desperate to invest and tap into the market that a national pandemic hasn’t slowed them down — particularly when the stock market is responding to the cancellation of flights and adjustments to the typical workday.

“If people have funds in a 401K and those funds go down, those funds may not be there anymore,” Qsar said. “This is a 30-year opportunity for a three-month incident.”

The California Association of Realtors expects the virus to have some impact on the luxury market as people hold off on buying second homes and investment properties in the face of uncertainty. Qsar has seen both buyers and sellers who are in the escrow process and need to travel transfer power of attorney to a family member or other trusted person. Rather than the fear of contracting the virus, some fear a quarantine, not having access to WiFi and allowing a sale to fall through their fingers

“They may put their masks on, they may bring hand-sanitizer with them but they’re still going to walk into that open house,” Qsar said, adding that he does not expect serious buyers to be deterred by the coronavirus.

New York City real estate has been particularly responsive to market effects from the virus — the state has seen more than 200 cases of coronavirus and, subsequently, 13 percent of open houses had no traffic at all last weekend. According to CNBC, average open house attendance fell 27 percent in the last week alone —  from an average of 5.6 people to 4.1 peopleper event.

McKenzie Ryan, a Compass agent working on high-end properties in Manhattan, said that the New York real estate market is particularly affected by daily headlines. And while that’s having real-world effects, some wealthy buyers are also capitalizing on the situation. She’s seen billionaire clients who normally spend a large portion of their time traveling get landlocked in New York and, as a result, use the extra time to arrange private showings.

“I think people are going to stay focused on their long-term goals and take precautions to keep themselves safe in the interim,” she said.

BY VERONIKA BONDARENKO via https://www.inman.com/2020/03/13/sanitizer-and-power-of-attorney-how-luxury-is-bracing-for-the-virus/ || March 13, 2020

Real estate agents are using TikTok to take their business to the next level. Here’s how creating content on this popular video-sharing app can help you build your brand and generate leads

Image by Harry CunninghamBY BERNICE ROSSMarch 04, 2020

Would you be willing to spend a few minutes a day to obtain over 100,000 page views for your new listing video? Better yet, what if it cost you nothing? This is what TikTok can do for your business provided you’re willing to jump in and play. 

Agents are finally realizing that if they want to remain competitive in 2020, video is a must. The challenge is that producing video requires time, separate uploading to the various social media sites, plus identifying a way to attract page views. 

Next-gen social networking: ‘social entertainment’

Emarketer explains that TikTok is a part of a new type of “social entertainment” where users can watch and create short videos. They can also create profiles and interact publicly with a network of contacts, as they do on other social media sites. 

It’s this social entertainment element that differentiates TikTok from other social media channels and has led to the app being installed nearly 1.6 billion times. 

An article from Inside Hook explains why this is happening: 

“The platform is currently the best way to reach young people, as they’re the age group using the app more than any other (60 percent of its users are ages 16 to 24). If you’re looking to get a message across to the largest (about 1.5 billion) and, arguably, most influential group of consumers, a short 15-second TikTok video is, at the moment, the fastest way to do that.” 

7 reasons TikTok matters for your business

When you first visit TikTok, you’ll probably wonder how a site that features Gen-Z users dancing to trendy music — like the viral “Renegade” dance challenge — could be relevant for real estate. Here are seven reasons TikTok should matter to your real estate business. 

1. It hits the sweet spot for millennial buyers and sellers

In terms of TikTok’s users, 26 percent are between the ages of 25 and 44, the sweet spot for today’s millennial buyers and sellers. The average user spends 52 minutes a day on the platform and opens the app eight times throughout the day.  

8

2. It generates insane amounts of free organic traffic 

Gary Vaynerchuk argues that TikTok and LinkedIn are the two places that give you amazing organic reach that don’t happen on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. He likens it to buying real estate in Manhattan in 1898, long before it became incredibly valuable. Vaynerchuk recommends posting a minimum of four videos per day. 

To illustrate this point, Alisa Glutz, a Scottsdale mortgage broker and author of Color My Credit, decided to “go play in the sandbox” over at TikTok because her two daughters and their friends were all avid users. Her experience illustrates how powerful this app can be for real estate. 

In less than 60 days, she generated over 4 million page views, 455,000 likes and 77,000 followers. Today, at the 90-day market mark, she has generated over 8.4 million page views. 

TikTok has also generated leads for her mortgage business, in addition to becoming a referral source for her clients who need the services of a real estate agent. What’s more, she sold 800 copies of her book in only one week. Before TikTok, it had taken her three years to sell that many books

3. It’s about the moms

Glutz was surprised by how many adults are embracing TikTok. What’s fascinating is that the teens who have seen Glutz’s “Color My Credit” videos are going to their moms and saying, “Mom, I don’t understand what she’s saying, but I think you should watch this.”

In other words, what teenagers see on TikTok has the potential to influence their parents’ approach to the listing or buying process. 

4. It provides genuinely helpful information

Glutz uses text boxes to provide her message. “How to Create a Great Credit Score” has garnered 845,600 views: 

@colormycredit

Learn the rules. Master the game. ##verymuchadequate ##foryoupage ##2020colormycredit ##creditcards ##creditempowerment

♬ original sound – smokinhottballz

“Don’t Make Your Credit Wobble” provides great advice to buyers who have a property under contract. It’s garnered close-to 69,500 views.

@colormycredit

If you are under contract to buy a house, don’t mess it up by doing one of these things. ##foryoupage ##mortgage

♬ Wobble – Radio Version – V.I.C.

A different approach is to explain a topic without the music. “How to Handle Late Payment to Get It Removed” has received about 674,100 page views. (Note that Glutz has two additional videos in this series. The total length of the three videos is only 45 seconds): 

@colormycredit

So you want to clean up uour credit and need to know what to say to try and fix bad accounts? ##foryoupage ##fyp ##credit ##debt

♬ original sound – colormycredit

5. It’s a syndication hub for other social media platforms

According to Raj Qsar, the CEO and founder of The Boutique Real Estate Group, TikTok allows you to syndicate your TikTok videos to other social media sites with a single click. You can also cut and paste your link to IGTV (Instagram TV) and YouTube.

6. It’s a great tool for brand building

When Qsar first began using TikTok, he was receiving about 200-800 views per post. 

Once Qsar figured out that TikTok did not have to be so formal and that you could use trending dances and popular music, his view count climbed into the thousands. Here’s an example of how TikTok provides exposure for his brand. 

@raj_qsar

Office meeting vibes 💃🏼 ##CozyLittleChristmas ##everwonder ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage ##tbreg

♬ Lip Gloss – Lil Mama

7. It can be used as a lead generator 

Jeff Pfitzer heads up a USA Mortgage team in St. Louis and has been training the real estate agents he serves to use TikTok. Pfitzer explains that your goal is to reach the local micro-community that would be interested in buying or selling where you do business.  

Both Pfitzer and Qsar agree that your TikTok videos work as tease for your listings. Once viewers see your TikTok video, they can then “swipe up” to your Instagram, Facebook and YouTube pages, where you can share longer videos. Since your buyers and sellers are on these sites, this is where the lead conversion actually occurs.  

Because of its global reach, TikTok can also be a powerful resource for generating international real estate leads as well. 

Real estate’s most successful TikTok user

Aaron Grushow, a 23-year-old Compass agent, has probably garnered more page views than any other real estate professional on TikTok. His posts typically receive at least 50,000-100,000 views. His goal is to establish his brand and generate leads. 

Grushow shoots 15-second videos highlighting lavish multimillion dollar estates in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Malibu. The following video has garnered 1.7 million views:

@aarongrushowhomes

Stunning Malibu beach house! ##malibu ##beach ##ocean ##view ##luxury ##goals ##amazing ##golden ##fyp

♬ Devil Eyes – Hippie Sabotage

4 critical takeaways based on Grushow’s success on TikTok 

• Make your videos stand out by focusing on what is unusual, funny or in this case, ultra-luxurious. 
• Tagging is critical. Your hashtags determine where your videos appear on TikTok. For the video above, his tags were: #malibu #beach #ocean #view #luxury #goals #amazing #golden #fyp (for your page).
• Like Glutz, Grushow has also had great success creating videos where he personally delivered a commentary. This video has received 5.5 million views and 1.7 million likes.

@aarongrushowhomes

MOST EXPENSIVE HOME EVER! ##mansion ##house ##home ##design ##modern ##expensive ##money ##rich ##luxury ##realestate ##goals ##losangeles ##pool ##city ##fyp ##dream

♬ original sound – aarongrushowhomes

• Grushow’s videos illustrate how amazingly powerful coupling unusual content and the right music can be. The following video is set to the theme for Jaws — something that Gen X-ers and Boomers would recognize, but many younger people wouldn’t know. It generated 4.2 million views. 

@aarongrushowhomes

Some high quality ##fishcontent ! More like ##sharkcontent 🦈! ##mansion ##house ##design ##modern ##shark ##fishtank ##fish ##water ##fyp

♬ Jaws Theme – Jaws

Is this the most viewed real estate video ever? 

When Grushow created a second video on the same subject and paired it with a trending TikTok song, the page views jumped to a whopping 48.5 million with 6.5 million likes! 

@aarongrushowhomes

Ever see a shark aquarium in a house?! ##shark ##fish ##fishtank ##aquarium ##house ##mansion ##luxury ##amazing ##beautiful ##fyp

♬ Can We Kiss Forever? – Kina

Will TikTok become the next big social media site for real estate?

“Social entertainment” is probably here to stay. The question is: Will TikTok emerge as the dominant player over today’s social media sites or will it go the way of Snapchat? 

No matter what, jumping on TikTok now can give you a significant edge over your competitors. If you need help figuring out how to use it, find a teenager to help you — renegade anyone? 

Original Post by:

https://www.inman.com/2020/03/04/tiktok-for-real-estate-how-to-harness-this-next-gen-social-media-app/

Bernice Ross, President and CEO of BrokerageUP and RealEstateCoach.com, is a national speaker, author and trainer with over 1,000 published articles. Learn about her broker/manager training programs designed for women, by women, at BrokerageUp.com and her new agent sales training at RealEstateCoach.com/newagent.