July 21st, 2010
For mortgage brokers, investment advisors and many professionals it’s important to execute both passive and active marketing tactics.
Realyze LeadTool Uses Social Networking for Passive Marketing
With your limited time, you need a nice baseline of passive marketing tactics that deliver a steady stream of inquiries with very little ongoing maintenance time. Things like a website, directory listings, referral arrangements, etc. are good examples. Realyze LeadTool is an excellent passive marketing tool because you spend 5 minutes setting it up, and you get a personalized social networking microsite that automatically connects you to friends of existing clients/customers using email/Facebook/Twitter. LeadTool automatically generates custom recommendation reports at the request of your customers and their friends…all designed with your photo, logo, contact information and branding.
Realyze Complete is the Ultimate Active Marketing for Brokers and Advisors
The downside of passive marketing is that results can be unpredictable. We all need a go to active marketing tactic that can be ramped up when lead flow is thin. Email campaigns, seminar invitations and direct mail are all good examples. Realyze Complete is an ideal active marketing tactic because it differentiates you from your competitors and increases your professionalism. With Realyze Complete, you can actively create and share customized mortgage or real estate recommendation reports for a specific prospect or client that may be further along your marketing cycle but need a little encouragement to decide. A good approach is to identify 2-5 warm prospects per day and email them a customized recommendation report that will blow them away. With Realyze Complete you can do this easily in 20 min everyday. If your passive leads are thin increase the amount of active marketing.
Sign up for your free trial of Realyze Complete or LeadTool today. Email us at activations@realyzetools.com
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June 21st, 2010
Working with mortgage brokers gives us a chance to get an insider’s view on the keys to success. Borrowers generally associate mortgage brokers with savings and advice. The savvy mortgage broker looks for refinancing opportunities that create savings for their clients during their period of interest. Clients in a crunch (Crunchers) may be interested in lowering their monthly payment short term while other may only be concerned with how to minimize lifetime payments across the entire term of their mortgage (Lifetimers). The first step is understanding your prospects period of interest and then finding the right mortgage product for them.
Realyze Complete now includes Refinance Savings Report™. In consultation with the mortgage broker community we’ve built a unique tool that allows brokers to quickly analyze savings available from refinancing. Brokers can easily show prospects how much they can save on their monthly payments, over 5 years, over 10 years or across the lifetime of the mortgage. Brokers can include break fee penalties and debt consolidation in the analysis. Contact the Crunchers on your list and show them how much they can save. Email the Lifetimers and get them excited with professional charts and tables on potential savings. Either way, you can make a professional Refinace Savings Report™ with your logo, name and contacts in 5 min or less using Realyze. Sign up for Realyze today and get the tools to grow your business.
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June 8th, 2010
We are excited to announce that Andrew Lee has joined Realyze to help equip mortgage brokers and professionals with tools to inform their clients and grow their business. Andrew has been hired as a Solutions Director based in Ontario and is looking forward to reconnecting with colleagues from the mortgage brokerage and financial services business. Andrew brings over a decade of experience to his new role with some of the biggest names in mortgages and financial services including Verico, Wells Fargo and BMO. Andrew will help Realyze spread the word about becoming a holistic advisor or mortgage professional. Contact Andrew at andrewlee@realyzetools.com and find out how Realyze can help you grow your business. Congratulations Andrew and welcome to the team.
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June 3rd, 2010
Preet Banerjee’s blog Where Does All the Money Go is developing a great tool that allows individuals to evaluate prospective financial advisors on some objective criteria. It includes a background check resource list for ensuring a potential advisor is properly registered as well as an 18 question survey that tests everything from an advisor’s transparency about fees to basic investment knowledge. Courageously, Preet is asking for feedback from all directions. For our investment advisor and financial planner readers, now’s your chance to provide Preet with some feedback on creating the fairest tool possible.
If you’re reading this Preet, we think you’re off to a great start. Our suggestion is to assess the advisor’s real estate advisory capabilities in the survey, probably in questions 9 and 10. Statistics Canada tells us that 47% of total Canadian household wealth is in real estate – far and away the largest asset class (more on this is our next posting). If I’m looking to an advisor to provide me with holistic financial advice it seems logical that they should be able to answer questions about my largest asset class, even if they’re not being commissioned on it. Advisors that offer advice on real estate matters have a clear advantage, are more desirable to Canadians, and should be scored higher.
Advisors can easily equip themselves with cost effective software tools that allow them to offer real estate advice that goes beyond the back of the envelope. Realyze is a great option. Check out short demo video.
Tags: holistic advisor, Know Your Advisor, real estate
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May 31st, 2010
Moneysmartsblog recently wrote an interesting piece on the difference between salespeople and true advisors. One of the stronger points was that true Advisors give clients options and let them chose for themselves, while the Salesperson presents a single option and then overcomes objections with the goal of driving a transaction.
While there are no doubt countless views on these definitions, I agree that most clients prefer to be educated on the best options and make a choice for themselves. Once a salesperson or advisor has the will and desire to present fact based options they are often faced with the challenge of developing new skills and knowledge in order to deliver more complete advice. At Realyze, our goal is to make it easy for sales people and advisors to deliver Accountant Grade Advice on real estate matters in 5 min or less. The software gives you the same power as someone who has spent years studying and makes giving good advice accessible to all advisors.
Realyze automates all the complicated stuff and collects the data professionals need to give clients fact based options and insight on buying or selling a home, investment property or cottage. Sign up for Realyze today and make the jump from salesperson to advisor.
Tags: analysis tool, holistic advisor, real estate
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May 25th, 2010
The fun thing about leading a software company is meeting the people your software helps. I had a meeting today with Frank Cipolla of Investors Group (contact Frank for ways to pay less tax) who saw great potential for Realyze within the investment advisor industry and Investors Group specifically, particularly with progressive advisors. Frank’s view is that the best advisors are relationship people that look to address all of their client’s financial needs including real estate. Like many advisors Frank has spent years creating his own set of financial models which he tweaks to each client’s situation. He then cut and pastes results into a Word document to share with his clients. This all takes considerable time. He sees Realyze as a way to save time while continuing to deliver a high level of service to his clients. Happy clients = more referrals (and the best path to growth for advisors).
If you’re a progressive, relationship advisor give Realyze a try and differentiate your service to impress clients and grow. Sign up today.
Tags: holistic advisor, investment advisors
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May 20th, 2010
Where would you put your money in 2010 if you had to choose between an income property or Canadian index funds? The stock market seems jittery. The corporate bailouts of the credit crisis have transformed into swelling national debts. The shaky European countries seemed destined for bankruptcy and the less shaky ones are being forced to pull them up by the bootstraps. The impending cuts in government spending will most certainly affect private sector profits on both sides of the Atlantic. None of this inspires great confidence in Canadian index funds or your liquid stock market instrument of choice.
Those inclined to get their hands dirty in real estate will point to the power of the cashflow property and its alluring companion, property appreciation, and say forget about the swings of the TSX. But it’s beginning to feel a little bubbleish in Canadian markets, particularly the Toronto and Vancouver markets. The doom and gloom of the credit crisis is ancient history as prices and volumes continue to hit all time highs. The showstopper here will be the disappearance of cheap mortgage payments and the record deep debt pit Canadians have built for themselves. The only question is how fast these factors will affect prices. My bet is we’re in for a leveling off of real estate prices for 3-5 years and a long flat period of zero to 2% annual price growth.
If you can find an income property that gets you a cash on cash rate of 5% or better and you like to get heavily involved in your investments, go for the income property. Use Realyze to calculate the cash on cash rate of any income property scenario. If you can’t, I’d put my money on the index fund.
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May 19th, 2010
Let’s hope none of us ever hear this from our partners. We’re entering an uncertain era of rising interest rates at the same time as Canadians chock up record levels of personal debt. A perfect storm might be a dramatic way to put it but it’s important that all of us with mortgages do a little bit of homework and check just how bad things might get with our mortgage payments.
Whether you’re in the variable or fixed camp is almost irrelevant when it comes to a sustained period of high interest rates. In either case, if rates go up substantially and we enter a period of high interest rates for 5 years or more most of us could be in for a huge increase in monthly mortgage payments. The variable folks will feel the pain earlier, but the fixed folks will feel it harder when their mortgage comes up for renewal – a reality that awaits most people within the next 2-5 years.
It’s not inconceivable that rates could double with many people paying 6-10% on a heavy debt load. It was only 3 decades ago that Canadians were paying mortgage rates well into the teens.
The good news is it’s easy to Stress Test Your Mortgage using Realyze. Pick your own worst case scenario interest rate and find out how much your monthly payment would increase. Once you know this you’ll be armed with the knowledge to prepare you and your family and never have to hear the words “We have to sell the house…”
Stress Test your mortgage free with Realyze.ca
Tags: calculate mortgage payment, fixed vs. variable mortgage, mortgage stress test
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May 18th, 2010
The 2010’s are shaping up to be the holistic advisor decade. Advisors and companies that deliver the one stop promise for financial advice will be the winners. Successful advisors will be progressives that offer advice on all aspects of a client’s financial life including investment, insurance and real estate decisions. Here’s why:
1. There is a strong trend towards convergence of services in the insurance, investment and real estate worlds. Insurance brokers now offer investments, mortgage advisors offer insurance, stock brokers are now wealth managers with a wide array of mutual funds and so on. The business of financial advice is about building and maintaining client relationships. Real estate is the most important financial matter in most people’s live’s. If an advisor doesn’t want to answer questions about real estate they’ve failed to deliver the one stop promise and will lose out to The Holistic Advisor.
2. Clients prefer one advisor to three. It’s simply easier to seek financial advise from one source. Clients will migrate to the advisor that can answer all their money related questions whether it’s investment, insurance or real estate.
3. Software tools are improving quickly. This means there’s no reason for an investment or insurance advisor to shy away from real estate questions. If the tools exist to do complex real estate analysis in 5 min regardless of real estate experience, there’s no reason not to exceed your client expectations, improve their satisfaction and generate more referrals.
The Holistic Advisor Decade is upon us.
Our objective at Realyze is to help advisors of all kinds grow their business by providing the tools that make real estate analysis and presentation easy. We support The Holistic Advisor. If you are a progressive advisor of any kind, your clients have real estate questions, and we have the tools to help you answer them quickly and inexpensively today. Video Demo
Tags: financial planners, holistic advisor, insurance, investment advisors, real estate
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The mission of Realyze Real Estate Tools Inc. is to make real estate decisions enriching and easy. Realyze enables financial services, real estate companies and other trusted advisors to extend their one stop value proposition into the natural progression of analytical real estate advice.