Westlake Village CA is a beautiful area for First Time Buyers to buy their first home. The city is split between two counties, Ventura County and Los Angeles County. Westlake Village is considered a suburb of Los Angeles. The closest two year college to to Westlake Village is Moorpark College. The closest four year University is California Lutheran University(CLU). Being a First Time Home Buyer in the present market means you have many options available to you. The values of homes have drastically reduced over the past few years making home prices much more affordable. A First Time Buyer in this market will be able to buy much more home for the money compared to a few years ago. Also, another great aspect of buying your first home in Westlake Village is that the interest rates are still... 04/14/2011

Conejo Valley Market Stats for 4/13/2011 Areas include Thousand Oaks, WestlakeVillage, Agoura, Oak Park and Newbury Park       Current Actives 791 Last Year Actives 601 Sold YTD 476 Contingent 347 Pending 176 CYB/Pending Totals 523       Actives Pending/Contingent Sold Year to Date Median List Price $650,000 $489,000 $500,000 Median Sold Price     $492,500 Beds/Baths 4 plus 3 3 plus 3 3 plus 3 Median Sq Ft 2242 1844 1896 Median DOM (days on market) 70 92 97 Price Per Sq Ft. $290 $265 $259   What impresses me with these numbers is the total of Contingents and Pendings. In 30-60 days those turn into sales. That indicates the 476 sold will jump significantly. The price per square foot and the days on market are similar to last weeks numbers as well as the median pricing.    We are climbing... 04/14/2011

If you've clicked this link, obviously you want to give your opinion...and that's exactly what we want! Earlier this year, many of the local Southern California MLS boards merged, leaving us to make sense of their data (If you didn't know it already, there is no data normalization between MLS boards, making this task especially fun). RealtyTech has been working diligently to ensure our clients have the most accurate search results possible. We've also taken this time to update our current IDX search capabilities and layout. There is just one problem... we've had very little feedback from the truly proactive Realtors® out there regarding the needs of an IDX property search. So, with that said, what makes a good IDX property search? What features would your "dream" IDX include? Ease of us... 04/01/2011

Westlake Village CA Open House this weekend, Sunday March 13, 2011 Sunday, March 13th 1-4pm Open House Westlake Village, North Ranch area 4539 Tam O Shanter Weslake Village (North Ranch) Built in 1980, 4+3, 3000 sw.ft., 4587 sq.ft. lot, granite counters in kitchen, expanded master suite, Reduced to $679,950, regular sale Virtual Tour This listing is located in the Ben Johnson Fairways off of Golf Course Drive and Kanan. 03/11/2011

Of course you provide your customers' listings with video tours. Of course you place those same videos on YouTube... But are really using the power of videos to their true potential in your real estate business? Are you really? Instead of the usual videos of a home's interior, use videos to market you, the real estate agent, as an expert in your field. Brand yourself as the go-to realty professional in your area. How can you do this? Well, you're already offering useful information in articles, newsletters and blog posts on how to sell a home in a down market, how to give a home great curb appeal, how to figure out if you can really afford a home. etc. (aren't you?) Why not videotape yourself giving such information? In addition to writing an article on home staging, for example, put to... 03/07/2011

  Open House today, Saturday, March 5th, 2011, 1:00-4:00pm 4539 Tam O Shanter, Westlake Village (North Ranch) 4+3, 3000 sq.ft., $679,950 Just Reduced NORTH RANCH home! Upgraded 4+3 w/expanded Master suite & expanded secondary bedrooms. Distinctive, herringbone-patterned hardwood entry leads to step-down living room w/dramatic stone fireplace, wet bar & French doors to yard. Formal dining room offers skylight & addl French doors to backyard. Attractive cook's kitchen includes double stainless steel dishwashers, double ovens, & large eat-in area. Laundry room off kitchen includes utility sink & plenty of cabinets. Double-door, step down downstairs bedroom w/bathroom/shower off hall, is currently used as office/study w/built-in cabinets. Upstairs oversized master br offers brick fireplace... 03/05/2011

My dear Westlake Villagers -- Because you live in the best possible dot on the MAP of the UNIVERSE, I'm wondering if you realize how great our community really is: 1. Lovely, Mild Climate of Southern California, even in the winter it's in the 60's and 70''s! http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/93063 2. WE are close to the BEACH and to the MOUNTAINS! 3. Social Life in Westlake Village is DIVINE! http://www.805living.com/ 4. All of the ABOVE! Call or email Kathy Smiley for more information about living in this Westlake Village / Conejo Valley PARADISE!! (805) 497-7804, Check out my informative blog  and REal Estate website below for unlimited property searches at the Best REal Estate Search Site for Westlake Village REal Estate!  www.KATHYSMILEYHOMES.COM Happy Hunting! :) Kathy Smiley ... 03/01/2011

With more than 277 million people using mobile devices (smartphones) today, are you marketing your home listings via their mobile phones? Here are some tips to help you market your real estate listings to those potential clients who navigate the Internet via a smartphone device. Assign a unique text code or mobile ID to each of your property listings. This allows potential clients to get details on the property and your contact information, as well as view photos of the home. You'll be able to use mobile IDs for other advertisements, such as ads online, for sale signs, ads in newspapers and magazines, your e-mails and even your property brochures. Potential home buyers can click on property links to see pictures in the text message and then will be taken to a mobile website that will le... 02/25/2011

Swimming Pool and Spa Builder Contractor Westlake Village Los Angeles County and Ventura County - So Cal Pool Builders delivers quick completions, competitive pricing and quality workmanship! At SoCal Pool Builders, we are famous for our competitive pricing, speedy completions and quality workmanship. Most of our swimming pool and spa construction projects are swim ready in 5-7 weeks from start of excavation. Building a swimming pool and spa can be stressful. But it does not have to be with SoCal Pool Builders. Why? Because you deal directly with the Kevin Clayton, builder/owner/swimming pool contractor. We keep it simple, You deal with one person from start to finish who is easily accessible through all stages of the swimming pool and spa project in Westlake Village Los Angeles County... 02/17/2011

If you've decide to take the plunge into promoting your real estate services online, here are a couple of tips on how to get started developing relationships with potential clients. 1) Get some sort of auto-responder program. This is an automated e-mail system that will let you gather e-mail addresses of potential customers and then follow up with them automatically, even as you sleep (hence the "auto" and the "responder"). All you need to do is send out targeted messages to your list at regular intervals. Aweber.com and ConstantContact.com are two of the best known. Both are reasonably priced as well.  2) Then you'll need to get potential prospects to give you their e-mail addresses.  To start collecting email addressed from prospective clients, you'll need to provide an opt-in form on... 02/17/2011

02/11/2011

We wrote in our last post about why participating in real estate forums where potential homebuyers and sellers hang out can be a great way to market your real estate services. This post will talk about the best way to do so. Aim to post to the forums you've chosen at least two or three times a week. The more you post, the more your posts' readers will see your signature and the better chance you have of getting the link to your website or blog clicked upon (and the more people will visit your website/blog). The most important thing you can do (or, in this case not do) is "sell" on these forums. For one thing, forums usually don't allow this. For another, blatantly offering your services, or claiming you can sell a home at full price in 30 days in a down market, or even just coming acros... 02/07/2011

In an agreement that will help real estate professionals market their services more easily to potential home buyers and sellers, the Burbank Association of REALTORS® has hired RealtyTech Inc. to provide IDX, Mobile IDX, real estate websites, along with other real estate products and services for all their members. An Internet Data eXchange (IDX) is an MLS search solution that allows those looking to buy property the ability to conduct searches of MLS properties within a user-specified area and their parameters. RealtyTech, Inc., based in Westlake Village, CA, has created IDX123, an IDX MLS search system that allows real estate agents to present all active MLS listings with their brand (i.e. picture and contact information). When a viewer clicks to see the details of a property it featu... 02/04/2011

In addition to optimizing your real estate website, setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts so that you may engage potential clients via social media marketing, blogging, and sending e-mail newsletters, a great way to market your real estate services is through forum posting. Posting on forums is free, by the way. Forum posts often come up in search engine results as people search for information on a product or service. Literally hundreds of thousands of forums exist online and cover millions of topics. Real estate is one of the more popular topics. Naturally, some real estate forums are geared just for Realtors and other real estate professionals, some are for homebuyers and sellers (consumers) and others are for both. We recommend you opt for forums where consumers congregate. To be... 02/04/2011

We spoke in our last post about how a well-optimized website can be the difference between success and failure in today's real estate arena. This is part 2... Many real estate professionals have tried pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns with mixed results. Yet perhaps the "worst" thing about PPC is the fact that once you end your campaign, your ads don't appear. Yet your competitors' still do! Good on- and off-site SEO, however, can see your site coming up in the first few listings of free (also known as "organic") results for months and years. And without the constant cost of high PPC campaigns. Optimize your website and then write and distribute articles or blog posts and these tools will work for you and be viewed by your target market for months and years. Not that you should ignore PPC c... 01/14/2011

That's a scary title: your RE business may fail without SEO... Unfortunately, it's becoming more and more true: unless you've been in the real estate profession for many years and have a ton of word-of-mouth referrals at your beck and call, your real estate business may very well sink today unless you go online and use search engine optimization (which, for the purposes of this post, includes social media marketing). Why? Because real estate is extremely competitive (but you knew that) and that competition is going online (which you also know). In addition, if you're not optimizing your website and using all that social media marketing can bring you, your competitors are! Don't get left behind. If you're a Realtor in a large market such as Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, At... 01/10/2011

As you create your real estate website, here are four things we believe are key to ensuring your website will bring you listings and client leads -- for free. 1) Be sure to place a link to your website on your Facebook page (you do have a professional page on Facebook, yes?). Engage in useful dialog with your followers about your local real estate market and you'll soon see an uptick in the number of people going to your website from the link on your Facebook page. 2) Update your website frequently with fresh content. This is probably one of the most important things that Realtors consistently miss. Updates can be as simple as posting to your web site's blog every day. Adding a page of content (information about your local area, for example) at least once or twice a month is also a grea... 01/05/2011

... Especially when it involves a brick fireplace that you've never been attracted to. Do you have one of these?  A dated reminder in your home of  just how old it may be?  You've never been attracted to it, but it was functional and served it's purpose; yet you never knew how to break it off and move on to something new?  These Westlake Village Home Owners were in that exact position when they called Platinum Home Staging, Inc.  for "counseling".  It was rocky, awkward and lop-sided; but it had a good foundation to work with and our Professionals were able to look past the flaws and work them through the process of a beautiful new relationship ~ yes, with their fireplace. This was just one element of remodeling this Westlake Village home.  These Home Owners wanted to go from Traditiona... 01/05/2011

MORTGAGE RATES POP UP!!! According to Freddie Mac, the typical rate mortgage lenders were offering on 30-year Conforming Fixed Rate Loans was up to 4.83%, up from last month's record lows of 4.17% since rates hit bottom! The Japanese Candlestick Chart below shows the decline in the price of the 30-year mortgage backed securities over the last 30 days.  Conforming and Jumbo Fixed Rate Mortgage rates respond in the opposite direction, which is why mortgage rates are up.   Does this mean that Conforming and Jumbo Rates bottomed out, and we will now see rates continue to climb from here? The answer to both questions is the trillion dollar question that all of the analysts on Wall Street, Washington and on Main Street are trying to figure out.  So how does this news impact your timing to pur... 12/30/2010

We often talk on this blog about doing this, that or the other thing to create a search engine optimized website for your real estate business. So, we decided to offer you a basic step-by-step strategy for optimizing your realty website.. Step 1) Keyword Research You're going to need to find out what keywords your target audience uses consistently to find information about homes for sale in your area. You first should try "My City" + "real estate" and then "Neighborhood" + "real estate" and see what comes up. Also substitute terms such as "homes for sale," "homes," "homes for sale"+ "City," as well as "homes for sale" + "neighborhood." Aim to get as specific as you can (use the name of a development within a particular community or city, for a example), as the more specific the keyword ... 12/27/2010