MY FIRST PLACE, HGTV’s hit series, is coming back for a Fifth season and we’re looking for first-time homebuyers in the Greater Philadelphia and Greater Denver areas RIGHT NOW!
We are looking for fun, high-energy people who are just starting the home-buying process for their first place! Our goal is to capture all the trials and tribulations of looking for, bidding on and buying your first place.
Taping takes place between now and November 2008. Ideal candidates will be enthusiastic buyers with a great story to tell and a desire to share their experiences. Singles, couples and families are all invited to apply!
Candidates who are chosen for the show will also receive a unique SURPRISE that HGTV has picked just for you!
Also, if you’re getting ready to sell your home, MY FIRST SALE is also looking for potential home sellers in Denver, CO.
In the second of our series of Bloggers Council flipcam projects, Joseph Ferrara sits down with young Patrick to get his take on life in Holmdel, NJ.
It’s a totally different take on using video in the real estate space and it shows how, outside of things like home walk-throughs, you can use video to help tell a story or add a more human touch to getting to know a neighborhood.
Editor’s Note: Recently, Inman News reported that the real estate section of the LA Times’ Sunday edition would cease production. The following post explores what made that decision inevitable. Also, this post is the first of many you’ll see from members of FrontDoor’s Bloggers Council. Check out their full blogs via our blogroll links on the right side of this page.
The proliferation of free information - and tons of it - on the web has been the cause of newspaper subscription shortfalls for several years. The fact that the LA Times has discontinued its real estate section is a sign that the RE.net has made dramatic strides in dissemination and transparency.
Multiple listing services across the nation are blasting the information via millions of websites, making much of what was once available only to professionals accessible to the home web surfer.
…When You Can Get The Milk For Free
As the financial struggle of the print media increased, the cost of advertising in a black and white, one-dimensional form became more and more cost prohibitive. It’s not good business sense - or any kind of sense - to pay an exorbitant fee for a two-day, three-line ad requiring excessive abbreviations, no pictures and limited information. Free services such as VFlyer allow the blast of a full-color brochure with multiple pictures and just about as much hyperbole as you can possibly think of. These easy-to-use services make the web a logical choice.
The real estate environment’s local-focused websites have already taken over the loss of the print media outlet. RE.net sites are aggressively proactive in their research and development to fill any missing piece of data, whether it’s real or perceived. As suppliers of not only information and new technology, but as experts in the sale transaction, we are staking our claim and maintaining our status as the go-to professionals. We are leading the revolution at the demand of the consumer.
Tornado Warning
The internet is a Class 5 twisting and ripping its way through every industry within range, making significant changes with every rotation. The proliferation may be moving too quickly for those who either enjoy receiving their information on paper or are not comfortable with online news gathering, but there’s no stopping the storm.
When power-blogger Jay Thompson sent me this photo, I knew it wasn’t USPS’s edgy, new ad campaign; but it was a shocker to learn this was our Flip Video shipment from Knoxville to Phoenix gone terribly bad.
That said, the visual does lend itself to a simple analogy on video’s eventful route to real estate marketplace adoption: an extended journey, riddled with questions as to why it hadn’t arrived earlier, subject to unexpected heavy handling along the way. But after a lengthy trip, it arrives at its destination with the promise of delivering value — albeit later than originally anticipated. (And by the way, the Flip Video emerged in tact as well!)
Huh, what? I’m talking about the new level of accessibility to Video within real estate. Think multimedia, or Visual Language–if you want to get fancy. Consumers demand it in every other area of their lives so they can visualize ideas and understand experiences through the eyes of others. Why wouldn’t they expect it in real estate as well… one of the most visual areas of all!
Not sure about this? Watch some of the real estate-specific programming we offer on HGTV –you’ve got 90+ 1/2-hour programs per week to choose from, and growing. Or, join the nearly 20 million users already surfing online through our Lifestyle-focused “How To” videos and other multimedia content accessible on FrontDoor.com , HGTV.com , HGTVPro.com , FineLiving.com , DIYNetwork.com and FoodNetwork.com .
Think this media talk is too removed from your own real estate business? Think (or LOOK) again. YouTube , WellcomeMat , TurnHere and the Flip Video, to name a few, have given video power to the people with better technology at a lower cost. With a $150 or less investment at Amazon.com , you can arm yourself with a portable video cam and start creating your own local video.
As for the “How To” content I mentioned above… they’re a great resource for ideas to create your own “How To” local video in which you highlight your own real estate expertise and the uniqueness of your neighborhood.
Still not sure? Well, we’ve invited some of the FrontDoor Bloggers Council members to “take a step out onto the dance floor” first. Expect to see samples here soon of how they’re testing video in real estate.
Most important, test. Don’t worry about being perfect using visual-multimedia tools. Be real instead. YouTube and its millions of monthly users made this approach viable. Start sharing your opinions on camera and show your personality behind the headshot — before home buyers and sellers have even met you.
Recently, the FrontDoor team closed out the Inman Connect SF conference with a big win by being named “the most innovative media site” by Inman News. See the announcement We took the win as a huge honor because innovation is something we strive for in everything we do.
But what made us stand out? We think it has to do with something that Vikki Neil touched on in her panel discussion at the Inman Conference. See the video; remarks begin at 12:50
It’s actually pretty simple. Listings are only a part of the experience. A big part, to be sure. But, what about the consumer that’s buying their first home and has no idea where to start? What about the person that’s wondering why they might choose a victorian over a mid-century modern? There’s a massive universe of content and experiences surrounding the real estate space that FrontDoor embraces.
We’ve only just begun to leverage the massive library of content from our HGTV siblings. Even in our own organization, we’ve been dreaming up ways to use existing content. Examples such as our Designed To Sell series take entertainment-based videos and put some real utility behind them. And, we’re creating great new FrontDoor-exclusive series of our own.
We’re just getting started. All-in-all, the win was a big affirmation for our entire team and it just serves to point out how the view from our FrontDoor is more complete and appealing than ever before.
The FrontDoor is open! Stop by our booth located in the Sunset Court on the 2nd Floor of the Palace Hotel and say “Hello!” We’ll be showing off some of our new listings engine features and some great new content.
In addition, stop by the booth between 4:30 and 5:30 pm today to meet Sabrina Soto, host of HGTV’s Get It Sold and find out how you can “Test Your TV Presence” and interact with HGTV hosts and producers to see how you’d fare in a mock HGTV TV show experience.
People always ask me what drove HGTV into the real estate space? Well, it was a pretty simple leap for those of us on the inside.
Since launching HGTV in 1994, Scripps Networks Interactive has become the dominant media and marketing company in the home, food and lifestyle categories. Many of those highly rated shows that led to the success of HGTV were based on home design and real estate entertainment, such as House Hunters and Design on a Dime.
As HGTV started branching out and creating more shows that were in the focused lens of real estate buying and selling, the ratings were staying strong or increasing. We knew the real estate category had connected to consumers in terms of television. Why couldn’t that extend itself to an online product?
I think a lot of people in the industry were surprised to learn we were developing this product ourselves. How can a television company compete in an online space?
A little known fact: we have over 300 people in our company focused on building, designing, selling and programming our online properties. And while we’ve never dealt with real estate search before, we do own The Food Network. And while I’ll be the first to admit that real estate is way more complicated, you’d be shocked to discover just how many similarities there are between chicken recipes and home listings.
We considered partnering with established real estate portals, but the more we evaluated potential partners, the more we realized that something was missing. All the offerings were/are were very intensely data-focused. Don’t get me wrong, I love data almost as much as an analyst, but it’s only part of the picture.
A home is the biggest investment most people will ever make, but it’s not an investment that is made solely with a calculator. Emotions tend to run high when you’re buying, selling or moving, because ideally it’s not just about finding a “house,” it’s about finding a “home.”
Recently, a well-known broker in the Northeast told me that it’s the kitchen or the neighborhood that make 99% of the buyers take the plunge. Buyers hope for a deal along the way, but a “deal” is almost always secondary. I tend to agree.
For the FrontDoor team, we’re focused on creating and sculpting the real estate search experience into something holistically different. For the last six months, we’ve been dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s. But now, we’re headed towards some really cool stuff that we can’t wait to share.So, stay tuned and keep enjoying the hunt….
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