Sacramento Appraisal Blog

Market trends and real estate appraisals for divorce, estate settlement, loans, property tax appeal, pre-listing and more. We cover Sacramento, Placer and Yolo County. We're professional, courteous and timely.

Pouring rain in Sacramento and leaky roofs

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It’s been pouring rain over the past week in Sacramento (except yesterday thankfully). While on an appraisal inspection in the City of Galt on Friday, I snapped this image off Fumasi Drive at Vernon E Greer Middle School. The baseball diamond looks quite a bit like a lake, don’t you think?

There is traditionally a lull in real estate market activity during Winter months as inventory shoots up and prices cool down too. One of the advantages of shopping around during wet months though is that you get to see just how well the roof works. For example, I’ve had two very recent appraisal inspections where there has been obvious active water leaking. Had these inspections been in summer months though, there is a good chance the roof problem would have been missed because there may have been no obvious damage.

Do you have a leaky roof story? Or maybe leaking windows?

If you have any real estate appraisal, consulting, or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact me at 916.595.3735, by email, on our company website or via Facebook.

11 tips for making solid real estate videos

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I get questions quite a bit from real estate agents and loan officers about making videos, so I wanted to provide some tips on how to make a really good real estate video. These tips are not necessarily meant for home tours, but rather for sharing content on a website, blog, Facebook or Twitter. A good video can help build trust and convey professionalism for your brand, while a bad video can accomplish the opposite.

Right now I have 158 videos on my YouTube page and I make videos regularly for clients, non-profit ventures, my Sacramento appraisal business and to promote events through the Sacramento Association of Realtors. I also started a real estate video site.

Ingredients for a stellar real estate video:

1. Keep the camera steady. If it looks like there is an earthquake, you need to find someone else to hold the camera (or invest in a tripod).

2. You don’t need to buy a professional camera. You can use a basic handheld camera that takes both photos and videos. Most cameras are good enough to post on YouTube. The Flip is outstanding for videos.

3. When you film, make sure you record at the middle or higher size on your camera – not the smallest size. Look at your settings. The smallest size is usually 320 x 240 pixels and the middle or larger size is 640 x 480. Stick with the middle size because it’ll look better online. Most video players are larger than 320 pixels wide, so if your video is small in its original format, it can look odd or distorted when the online video player stretches your video.

4. Shoot in good light and remember that vibrant colors help things look interesting. Avoid dim and dark places because it just looks depressing.

5. Don’t copy others. Be yourself and be personable. It’s easy to sniff out when someone goes into “selling mode” too. You want people to feel comfortable with you and not get the sense you’re intentionally marketing to them. Avoid the used car salesman vibe.

6. Use a title or opening slide (with a photo or logo) and a closing slide with contact information. A polished slide in the beginning and end can help set your video apart from others and help your video look more professional. If you don’t know how to make a slide like this, I can help you (if you are a local agent – just call me). Examples below.

7. Think about pacing. Your slide at the beginning should be about 3 seconds or so and the slide at the end with your contact information can probably be 5-7 seconds at most. If your opening slide is 10-15 seconds long, you’ll probably lose your audience. If you use a title on your opening slide, just make sure your slide is long enough so people can read the title, but not too long. Get straight to the point by having the slide fade in and then fade out before the video comes in. Make your video fade in and fade out too (that’s accomplished very easily with #11 below).

8. Keep your video to a few minutes or less if you can. People have a short attention span. They’ll certainly watch your video if it’s really good, but if your videos are consistently seven minutes long, you’d be wise to consider shortening them to 1-3 minutes if possible. You don’t have to try to make each video the definitive resource on whatever you’re talking about either. Just get on base and after a while you’ll begin to score runs.

9. Your content ought to be focused on being resourceful to others and providing helpful and good information. Having good content is the key to a successful video and more important than any point mentioned above. Think about what questions people are asking and also what sort of things you know that will be helpful to others. This is the type of stuff you can talk about. Add value. Be a resource. And don’t be afraid to fail forward. Some videos won’t be as good as others. Certain ones will be too long or something won’t be quite right about them. That’s okay. You’ll improve over time. For example, some of my early videos make me cringe. But that’s how it goes. We never get better unless we try.

10. Don’t oversell. You definitely want to tell people how they can contact you (briefly), but be cautious to not just talk about yourself the whole time. That’s old school and it makes you look self-focused. We build trust with others through video by being personable and providing good content. If someone senses they can trust you, they’ll contact you. Trust builds business – bottom line.

11. Last but not least, you’ll need video editing software. Here are a few options:

Microsoft Movie Maker: If you have a PC, you very likely already have Microsoft Movie Maker installed already. This is a free program and really the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to movie making. Your end-product can still be decent with Movie Maker, but only if you have a good looking intro image and contact image (seriously). The fonts you can use for titles and contact information with Movie Maker can really make a video look cheesy in my opinion, but if you use your own images like I mentioned in #6, it can help boost the overall quality to a decent level until you buy editing software.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio: The non-professional “Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10” will cost you about $100. This is a very powerful tool and you can even do some neat stuff with a green screen too. In my opinion, no video software is really all that user-friendly. There is a learning curve for using anything. I think this is definitely true when it comes to Sony Vegas. What has truthfully saved me countless hours is to watch tutorials on YouTube when I have questions. When I don’t know how to do something, I simply go to YouTube and there is bound to be a tutorial video for how to use Vegas and do the particular thing I’m trying to do.

iMovie: If you have a Mac, iMovie is a great place to start because you already have it on your computer. Everyone talks about how easy it is to use, but I don’t really think that’s the case. There is still a learing curve. Something becomes easy once you know how to do it. Overall though, this program offers a lot of bang and I’ve been impressed with the quality of the effects as well as the titles.

YouTube Video Editing: You can try out a free service by YouTube to make very basic edits. I honestly haven’t used this because my tools are working well for me, but I wanted to mention it as an option.

Sampling of some of my videos: By the way, here are a few of my videos in case you wanted to check them out: Which house is overbuilt for the neighborhood?, Tour of a dark boarded-up REO, A major hoarder house in Sacramento, Major Rehab of a $5,000 fixer in Sacramento, 2011 NorCal Real Estate Expo and Be careful of those property tax mailers.

If you have any questions, let me know. I hope this was helpful. If you have any other tips too, speak on.

If you have any real estate appraisal, consulting, or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact me at 916.595.3735, by email, on our company website or via Facebook.

 

My $15.03 investment in fax marketing in 2008

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Do you get junk faxes? I usually get a couple spammy faxes per month, and so today’s “Florida vacation offer” was no surprise. This one fax actually got me thinking though about marketing strategies as well as a marketing piece I did in early 2008. I don’t know that I would still word things exactly the way I did, but I wanted to share this “Starbucks fax campaign” because it really illustrates some things about business. This is an older idea, but it just might still pack a punch.

 

Investing in Business: It’s so important to continue to meet people and consider ways we might connect with others, use new technology, be a blessing, and earn people’s trust for new business. When we stop marketing, our businesses start dying. Of course there thankfully isn’t much buzz about “fax marketing” nowadays, and I won’t say that my idea in early 2008 was novel, but I do think it gets points for creativity. It certainly earned me a few thousand dollars at least too. That’s not bad for investing $15.03 (five drinks and a three-cent phone call).

Questions: Moving forward in business is about providing a great product and service, trying new ideas, letting certain marketing methods die out and keeping things personal. Have you tried things in the past that you would never do again? What opportunities do you see right now for connecting with people in your field? Lastly, did you ever use a fax machine for marketing?

UPDATED ON 04/18/2013: If you came over from the Appraisal Buzz article I wrote, thank you for visiting. If you end up trying this idea, let me know how it goes.

If you have any questions or Sacramento home appraisal or property tax appeal needs, let’s connect by phone 916-595-3735, email, Twitter, subscribe to posts by email (or RSS) or “like” my page on Facebook

What are “date of death” appraisals?

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Settling an estate is one of those things that many of us don’t know much about until we actually experience personally. If you are in a situation where a loved one has passed or you recently inherited a property, I hope this information will help give you some insight into the process of estate planning as it pertains to real estate appraisals. 

How it Works: When an estate has a transfer of ownership due to death or inheritance, it is very common for a real estate appraisal to be needed for tax purposes. Typically a family member or heir chooses an appraiser for the job at hand, or an attorney or accountant will order the appraisal.

Estate or probate appraisals are commonly ordered between 2-6 months of the death of a loved one (or inheritance of property). Sometimes the appraisal is ordered right away within two weeks, while other times there is a much more substantial time period.

Retrospective Value: In estate planning situations it is common for the appraiser to perform a ”retrospective appraisal”, meaning that even though the property might be inspected today, it isn’t valued off of today’s date, but instead based upon a previous date (usually the date of death of the owner of the property, hence the term “date of death” appraisal). For example, if an owner of a property passed away on October 12, 2010 and the current date is March 23, 2011, the appraiser would inspect the property today, but the value conclusion would be based on what the market was doing on October 12, 2010. For example, the two estate appraisals on my desk right now were inspected very recently and their respective value dates are 4-6 months ago.  

Other Types of Value: In addition to needing a retrospective value during the estate planning or probate process, sometimes the ordering party will also request a current “as is” market value or value based upon the date the title transferred from the deceased to the heir (if the transfer was after the date of death).  In these cases there are really two appraisals being done since there are two separate values issued. Most of the time only one appraisal is needed though, but every situation is unique and it all depends on the particular needs of the estate. 

The Good News: If you are in a situation like this or expect to be soon, take assurance that the type of value is not something you have to spend time worrying about. There is no cause for alarm or worry at all. A good attorney or accountant can help direct you toward the type of value needed for your estate, and a company like mine already knows what questions to ask you. Your circumstances may be very difficult understandably, so the hope is that at least the professionals around you can help to smooth over some of the details like this so you don’t have to think too much about them. 

If you have any questions about the estate or probate process in the Greater Sacramento Region, feel free to contact me at 916.595.3735, ryan@LundquistCompany.com or visit our appraisal or estate settlement website.

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