Northern Virginia Real Estate

One of the things that people are naturally sensitive about these days is giving out their personal contact information.  We encounter this a lot when we speak with or exchange email with people about our services.  Let me explain.

www.NorthVirginiaHomes.com is currently the #1 ranked real estate website in Northern Virginia.  This is based on our #1 ranking on Google, the 800 lb gorilla of the search engine world.  We’re also top-ranked on Yahoo and MSN as well.  As a result, hundreds of people visit our website everyday.

An important part of our job is to categorize the people that contact us so that we can make the most efficient use of our time and resources.  Mainly, we try to determine how serious and ready you are to buy or sell a home. Naturally we need to devote most of our time and energy to the people who are serious and ready to buy or sell.  This makes sense doesn’t it ?

One of the ways that we determine if you are serious is to ask you for your contact information and verify it to the extent that we can.  Mainly we ask for your name, current address, home & cell phone.  Here’s the important part.

If you don’t want to provide us with your contact information, that’s perfectly fine but we will have to put you in the Not Serious category.  That’s seems reasonable doesn’t it ?  If you want to make use of our services, you should be willing to let us know who you are, where you live and how we can contact you.

Incidently, we think you should know the same about us.  That’s why we provide our telephone & email information at the top of our website and additional information on our disclosure page.

I hope this explains why we ask for this information.  I also want you to know that we will never sell your information or provide it to any 3rd party without your consent.

Thanks,

Frank 

Frank Ramos, REALTOR, e-PRO
www.NorthVirginiaHomes.com

We get frequent requests from people looking for a home to rent.  Unfortunately, we do not generally help people find a rental property.  For the most part, we work exclusively with northern virginia home buyers and sellers. 

The only exceptions to this are when:

1. We help a client who has already bought or sold a home with us
2. We help a homeowner to rent their home

When I explain this to people they naturally ask why we have rental properties in the property search on our website.  The answer is because we do refer people to our other offices that have rental agents.

As I mentioned, we will help you to rent your home or investment property.  We just don’t help people find a rental property. Incidently, if you are thinking of renting out your home or investment property you may be interested in taking a look at HUD’s Fair Market Rent guide for 2006.

Speaking of investment properties, I do want to quickly mention that we have a network of contractors that we work with who can help you to repair, upgrade or completely renovate your home or investment property.  Please give us a call if you or someone you know needs help getting their property fixed up to sell or rent. 

Frank Ramos, REALTOR, e-PRO
www.NorthVirginiaHomes.com

Lately I’ve received a number of inquires from people who’s homes have been on the market for awhile with other real estate agents.  Typically, they are requesting a home evaluation from our website http://www.northvirginiahomes.com/.

My assumption is that their home hasn’t sold in awhile and they are seeking a “second opinion” of sorts. This is always a difficult position for us because while we would like to be helpful in this situation and would like their business, we are prohibited by our ethical standards of practice from soliciting them while their home is listed with another Realtor.

While performing a home evaluation in and of itself may not be considered a solicitation, we’ve opted not to provide the evaluation because all of our marketing material associated with providing this service (emails, letters etc.) clearly has solicitations for business in it. 

So, if you or someone you know are in this unfortunate situation, we’d  like to be of service to you but we really can’t do anything until your listing with your present Realtor has expired or you have asked your current Realtor to withdraw the listing because you are dissatisfied with their service/results.

Once you’re no longer listed with another Realtor, please give us a call or email.  We’d love to help you!

Frank Ramos, REALTOR, e-PRO
http://www.northvirginiahomes.com/