I’m extra excited to announce our newest VARbuzz contributor, Matt Wilkins from Lake Ridge. What makes Matt so special is that he opened his own real estate brokerage at age 26, making him a Generation Y broker. And, well, you may have noticed that there aren’t a whole lot of those around.

He runs his business differently than many other brokers: For example, he doesn’t currently want to bring on any agents because he can be just as efficient (or moreso) by putting technology to work for him instead (and besides, software programs and smartphones don’t suck the life out of you like some agents can). His bread and butter business is not in traditional agency, and Matt definitely knows his tech toys. Oh, and you can meet him at VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008.

So, ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm VARbuzz welcome to Matt Wilkins!

If you’re a VAR member who has (inexplicably) not yet registered for VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008, you should have gotten an e-mail this morning comparing the lives of two REALTORS®. One who decided to attend the convention, and one who decided not to. 

This marketing effort was inspired by Twitter. Quick status updates of what people are doing throughout their days. For those of you who have registered (or who deleted the e-mail), I thought you might enjoy seeing this (especially if you’re part of the Twitterazzi).

By the way, the deadline to get your hotel room before the rates go up is Friday, September 5 (yes, that’s tomorrow!). Register now and book your hotel room before rates jump!

What is traditionally a two day meeting was slashed to one day as the VAR policy board moved expeditiously through their agenda last week and adjourned early (I assure you there were no tee-times involved). Here are some notable outcomes from the meeting:

• Cindy Stackhouse of Dumfries was elected President-Elect for 2009.
  • In 2007, John Powell of Colonial Heights was elected President-Elect, and will automatically ascend to President in 2009 in accordance with VAR’s bylaws.
• John Daly of Newport News was elected VAR Treasurer 2009-2010 (VAR Treasurer serves a two year term).
• John Dickinson of Union Church was elected 2009 Vice President.
• The Policy Board voted to recommend the strategic planning work group’s finalized strategic plan to the Delegate Body, who holds the ultimate authority to approve VAR’s strategic plan.
• Because the Delegate Body will not have the opportunity to approve the strategic plan until their next meeting in September, the Policy Board approved a preliminary 2009 budget. If the Delegate Body approves the strategic plan, VAR staff will prepare a budget that more accurately reflects the initiatives in the proposed strategic plan.

As a reminder, all VAR members are welcome at Policy Board meetings and their meeting schedule is published on the association calendar at VARealtor.com.

Over the past two weeks I’ve had a little bit of time to think about and discuss the findings of the first CREST real estate blogging survey with REALTORS® and social media experts in the industry. After spending nearly twenty hours poring over the data, writing the executive summary, preparing for a session at RE BarCamp, and answering questions about the report, I’m ready to start talking about the implications. Let’s get practical, shall we?

I’ve distilled the findings of the first CREST survey into three actionable things you can do to maximize your real estate blogging effectiveness. For reference, check out an abbreviated version of the results, or whip out your credit card and drop $9 to buy the full version. Of course, if you completed our first survey and provided us with your e-mail address, you’ve already received the full version.

Here are my conclusions:

1. THE TENURE EFFECT: The longer you blog the better it gets.

From visitors, to comments, to RSS subscribers, there is a positive correlation between your tenure as a blogger and these metrics. The CREST data suggests that there is a strategic inflection point after three years of blogging. Blogs started in 2005 received more than double the median comments, nearly triple the median unique visitors, and nearly six times the number of subscribers. I don’t think this is as simple as being a long-time blogger, though. Just because you’ve been blogging since 2005 (or earlier) doesn’t mean you’ll just automatically get better traffic and engagement, like some kind of entitlement. My suspicion is that the tenure effect is less about tenure and more about commitment. In other words, there are some real estate pros who started blogging many years ago and just decided it wasn’t right for them. They aren’t around to answer the survey. The best of those early bloggers — the ones who have stuck to it, continually trying to perfect their craft — ARE still around. And, I might add, they are more inclined to answer a survey like this one, because they want to compare their results to their peers and learn how to get even better. Is there a tenure effect? Yes. Is it based only on number of years blogging? Not likely. Bottom line: Keep blogging! The positive effects multiply as time goes on, but you’ll have to work hard, too.

2. FOR MORE ENGAGEMENT, POST LESS: The law of diminishing returns applies to blog posts.

The CREST data shows that the more you blog, the less engaged your readers are on a per-post basis. For example, on a per-post basis, respondents received the highest average number of comments when they posted between one and 10 times per month. If they posted between 21 and 30 times per month, the CREST data shows that they received the highest number of unique visitors per post. The CREST data shows that posting more than once per day triggers the law of diminishing returns. The lowest number of comments and unique visitors on a per-post basis was found among those bloggers who posted 31 times or more in a month. Bottom line: To maximize unique visitors per post, author between 20 and 30 posts per month on average.

3. PARTIAL TEXT RSS FEEDS DON’T PAY: Publish a full text RSS feed for more unique visitors.

At some point, virtually all bloggers are tempted to publish a partial text RSS feed. Many assume that by publishing only a snippet of their content by RSS, they’ll force subscribers to click through to their blog, and thereby earn more site visitors. The CREST data does not support this assumption. In fact, real estate bloggers who published a full text RSS feed received almost double the number of unique visitors per post than those who published a partial text RSS feed. I’ll leave it to the commenters to conjecture about why this is as it is. Bottom line: Publish a full text RSS feed.

Of course, YMMV, but the collective experience of 128 real estate bloggers is certainly more accurate than any one blogger’s isolated experience. I welcome your thoughts and conclusions about the first CREST survey results, leave a comment or link to us to join the conversation. And, before you click away from VARbuzz, please complete our second real estate blogging survey, which focuses on clients earned, a little bit of social networking, and frequently-used blog widgets.

Also, be sure to check out Mark Eckenrode’s analysis of our survey. He has some great insights, including a simple way for REALTORS® to reap potentially hundreds of potential prospects.

Via HousingWatch we learn that Lending Tree is now offering consumers the ability to shop for FHA-backed loans on their site. Some industry insiders say it’s an “interesting shift” that the mortgage lead generating service has taken, as the company gained notoriety in some circles for allegedly helping to lure unsuspecting consumers into so-called exploding ARMs during the height of the housing boom.

I actually used Lending Tree along with BankRate.com to compare loans several years ago. I had good experiences with both sites.

What say you, REALTORS®? How does this strike you?

Take the second CREST survey as we drill down into how much business REALTORS® are getting from their blogs and what social networking tools they use in conjunction with their blogging efforts. Everyone who completes the survey gets a copy of the executive summary, so get cracking! This survey closes at 9 a.m. EDT on August 21, 2008.

Oh, by the way, the results of our first survey were released today.

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Sunday, July 20 at 11:59 p.m. is your last opportunity to register for VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008 at the early bird rate, saving you up to $80. Not attending VAR this year? Your competition is pleased with your decision:

Hi, remember me? Your friendly competition? Look, as friendly as we are, let me be brutally frank.

I’m glad you haven’t registered for VAR’s Convention & Expo.

It’s a tough market, in case you hadn’t heard, and I want every edge I can get over you my competitors. Here’s what I’ll be getting at the Convention while you stay home and hold down the fort:

1. I’m going to network, face to face, with REALTORS®, brokers, and business leaders from all over the state. So I’ll be picking up new ideas, while you’re doing the same old, same old.
2. Sure, you can read Robyn Waters’s book, but I get to hear her talk, in person, about trends specific to real estate. I might even stop her or Andy Sernovitz or Douglas Rushkoff in the halls and ask them some questions, one on one! So I’ll be just a bit better prepared for the next year. And you?
3. Every few months you may get to hear Lem Marshall speak on a topic or two. I’m going to be able to catch him four times in a couple of days. (Not only will I get to ask questions, I’ll also hear what other people are asking.)
4. You know how when you come back from a conference and you’re full of good ideas? That’ll be me, and you’ll be… cold calling the same old prospects.
5. When you’re scrambling to meet your CE requirements, I’ll have already taken care of them. Have you seen how many sessions qualify?
6. In less than two hours, I’ll be able to learn about 50 free (or cheap) tech tools I can use in my business. You’ll still be flipping through PC Magazine.
7. I can go on a swanky harbor cruise and it’s a tax deductible business expense. Seriously.
8. VAR is expecting more than 70 exhibitors at the expo. It’ll be one-stop shopping for marketing material, value-adds for clients, technology, and a lot of other stuff. Stuff that you won’t learn about for months.

So yeah, I’ll take a few days and spend a few hundred bucks. But I’m virtually guaranteed to close at least one more sale based on what I’ll learn and who I’ll meet at VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008. That’s a hefty return on my investment. And that’s why I’m glad you’re not going… and I am.

July’s Commonwealth Online e-newsletter hit inboxes on Tuesday. These are the most-clicked links:

1. NEW Residential Disclosure Form from VREB (PDF download)
2. VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008 - Save $80 when you register by Sunday, July 20
3. Are agents independent contractors or just cheap labor?
4. NAR’s online Code of Ethics training (must complete by December 31)
5. CommercialSource.com, the commercial real estate marketplace

Stuff you might have missed:

1. Two online ZipForms training sessions (July 22, 2008 and July 29, 2008)
2. Virginia REALTOR® Land Institute education
3. Broker webcast: Managing Change with Roger Turcotte
4. Valuable VAR member discounts
5. Risk Management Roadshow for Brokers (PDF download)

Do you write a real estate blog? If you answered yes, you should take the Center for Real Estate & Social Technologies’ (CREST) five minute blogging survey. The deadline to complete the survey is 9 a.m. on Friday, July 11. For taking the survey, we’ll provide you with an executive summary of the survey results along with the aggregate data.

The results of this survey will help you benchmark your stats against the field so you can see where you stand relative to your competition. If you ever wondered about your blogging success on any of the following metrics, this survey will help you figure it out:

• Number of RSS subscribers
• Number of monthly unique visitors
• Number of comments per post
• …and more!

REALTOR®-bloggers: Take five of the next 2786 minutes to take this survey!

I’ll give you three guesses.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

It’s Bob Carney, blogs extensively at FocusOnFrederick and is known to the Virginia REALTOR® Twitterazzi as simply GotBob. He’s from Frederick. No, not Fredericksburg, but Frederick. As in Frederick, Maryland.

I can hear it now, “Oh, great! VAR takes its convention to Baltimore, and now we have a contributor from Maryland on VARbuzz. Next thing ya know, those crazy varmints at VAR will be moving their offices to Annapolis!”

Hardly! Sure, the real estate profession has its nuances from state to state, but all REALTORS®, no matter where they work, encounter many of the same issues. And with Frederick located within the footprint of MRIS and the greater Washington DC market, Bob will have plenty of relevant perspectives to share with us Virginians.

Bob is an alumni of Virginia Real Estate Bloggercon 2.0 (yes, he braved a Potomac River crossing for it), an avid social media marketer, and you might even get to meet him at VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008 (leave lots of comments on his first post begging him to come).

Please show Bob some Virginia hospitality and welcome him as VARbuzz’s newest contributor!