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Foundations of Real Estate Financial ModelingOverview of key concepts
Written by
Tim Vipond
Published April 2, 2023
Updated July 7, 2023
The Foundations of Real Estate Financial ModelingThis guide will outline the foundations of real estate financial modeling and the key concepts you need to get started building your own models for development projects.
In order to get started, we will begin by defining some of the key terms you’ll need to know before building your model.
Real Estate Terms and DefinitionsLTV – “loan to value” – the amount of debt financing a lender will provide as a percent of the market value (e.g., 80%)
LTC – “loan to cost” – the amount of debt financing a lender will provide as a percent of the cost of a development (e.g., 70%)
NOI – “net operating income” – gross rental revenue less operating expenses (property taxes, insurance, repairs & maintenance, capital expenditures, etc.)
Cap Rate – net operating income divided by the value of the property, expressed as a percentage (e.g., 4.5%)
Amortization period – the number of months/years the principal repayments of a loan are spread out over. The total length of time it will take you to pay off your mortgage (e.g., 30 years).
Structures and Joint Ventures (JVs)Most developments are structured as a joint venture between General Partners (GPs) and Limited Partners (LPs).
Key points about GPs:
Responsible for all management decisions
Fiduciary duty to act for the benefit of the limited partners
Fully liable for its actions
May have guarantees as security on borrowing
Key points about LPs:
Limited refers to “limited liability”
Have priority on liquidation, ahead of the GPs
Provide capital to fund the development project
Have no control over the management of the fund/project
Assumptions Section of the Financial ModelAs covered in CFI’s real estate financial modeling course, the key assumptions that will be input into the model include:
Schedule
Property Stats
Development Costs
Purchase and Sale
These are discussed in great detail in our actual course.
Development Cash Flow ModelTo set the foundations of real estate financial modeling, it is important to cover the key sections that will be built based on project assumptions.
The key sections in the development model include:
Absorption (timing and pace of sales)
Revenue
Commissions
Warranty
Land acquisition (capital cost)
Pre-construction costs
Construction costs
Financing and interest expense
Levered Free Cash Flow
Output and Pro FormaOnce the model is built, it’s important to create a one-page summary document or Pro Forma that can be shared with bankers, investors, partners, and anyone else who needs to analyze the deal.
This output pro forma should include the following information:
Property stats
Schedule – summary key dates
Financing assumptions
Sales assumptions ($ total / per unit / per SF)
Budget ($ total / per unit / per SF)
Returns (IRRs)
Return on cost
Return on sales
Sensitivity analysis
Example of a Real Estate Financial ModelThis is an example of the one-page output from our real estate financial modeling course. As you can see, it clearly displays all the information listed above and makes it easy for someone to evaluate the deal.
Here is an example of the actual inner workings of the model, where you can see absorption by month for the development project, which builds up to revenue and, ultimately, cash flow.
These foundations of real estate financial modeling are covered along with much more detail in our online course.
Cap Rate and Net Operating Income (NOI) ExampleNet operating income, which is equal to gross rental revenue less operating expenses (property taxes, insurance, repairs & maintenance, capital expenditures), is the key profitability or cash flow measure used to evaluate real estate development transactions.
Cap rate, which is equal to net operating income divided by the value of the property, is expressed as a percentage and used to value real estate. The lower the cap rate, the more highly valued a piece of real estate is, and the higher the cap rate, the less valued the real estate is. Price and cap rate move in inverse directions to each other, just like a bond. Learn more in our financial math course.
Financial Modeling CourseThe best way to learn is by doing, and CFI’s real estate financial modeling course gives you the step-by-step instruction you need to build financial models on your own. It comes with both a blank template and a completed version, so you can easily build a model on your own or just go straight to the completed version. The high-quality video instruction will guide you every step of the way as you work through a case study for a townhouse real estate development project.
Additional ResourcesThank you for reading CFI’s guide to Foundations of Real Estate Financial Modeling. To learn more about valuation, corporate finance, financial modeling, and more, we highly recommend these additional free CFI resources:
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How Iot Impacts Commercial Real Estate?
How IoT Enhances Commercial Real Estate?
Since IoT has essentially impacted real estate, we will investigate more to perceive how IoT further develops the business real estate industry. We should find out what sorcery IoT performs to get an enormous change in an area as tremendous as real estate.
Higher Resale Esteem Monitoring the EnergySmart sensors, fans, and machines assist the directors with checking the room and tracking, assuming that the apparatuses are working pointlessly. It saves a ton of energy and, at last, outcomes in a decrease in energy bills.
Improved ExperienceThe general client experience will undoubtedly improve when innovation enters the image. The Web of Things will further develop the general client experience with instruments and techniques that distinguish air quality, regular light, warmth, and house lighting.
Improves the Working EnvironmentIoT is known for continuously putting away a huge measure of information; subsequently, savvy IoT frameworks and innovation can be utilized for working environment streamlining. IoT empowers sorting out where the workers are investing the most energy and keeps up with the representative’s efficiency.
Stocks TrackingIt becomes hard for enormous real estate organizations to monitor unrefined components like concrete, concrete blocks, and so on as they are put away in mass. IoT empowers smooth tracking of these materials with the least to zero mistakes.
Advantages
The IoT empowers faster networks and the most extreme mechanization of different activities.
Carrying out smart IoT gadgets in real estate expands the resale worth of properties.
Smart technology in IoT brings about a more effective structure for the executives and upkeep.
Smart real estate with IoT innovation brings about more effective land on the board and maintains a strategic distance from postponements and shocks.
Utilizing IoT saves realtors time and exertion as they can work with numerous areas.
Applications Air Conditioning EffectivenessIoT has changed our way of dealing with warming, ventilation, and cooling. IoT gadgets can examine and discuss information with other brilliant gadgets to screen and develop frameworks. IoT gadgets can change temperatures and ventilation by room instead of binding together the whole framework, saving land owners and chiefs energy and utility expenses.
Work Environment and Work Process ImprovementIoR dissects applicable data progressively so that occupants and building proprietors can grasp their functional requirements and expenses. For instance, IoT frameworks can follow staff areas and developments to distinguish where workers invest most of their energy over the day. With this data, inhabitants can decrease functional expenses, and building proprietors might decide to rent the unused space to another occupant. Shrewd administration frameworks can likewise assist organizations with recognizing bottlenecks and further developing their floor plans for the greatest productivity.
Lighting Productivity Upgraded Inhabitant ExperienceHaving the option to follow significant data and patterns in your structure isn’t only valuable for building proprietors yet occupants too! Not in the least do IoT gadgets give more open working or living conditions for representatives or occupants, yet they likewise offer other support arrangements that make life simpler. These could incorporate associated surveillance cameras, savvy lifts that limit holding up times, gathering room planning gadgets, and parking area sensors that find open spots!
Air Quality ImprovementBy executing an interest control ventilation framework, you can screen CO2 levels, temperature, moistness, and residue to recognize any harmfulness and further develop the indoor air nature of your space.
ConclusionHow Can I Improve My Real Estate Sales Skills?
Successful real estate agents stand apart from the others by being great at their jobs and really benefit their clients. The best agents are passionate about what they do and work equally well with sellers and buyers. Most successful agents have a proven track record and do not hesitate to provide testimonials of past work.
There are many traits and characteristics you need to become a successful real estate agent in today’s competitive market. Some of these are listed and explained in detail below to help budding real estate agents entering the profession to succeed in the field of a successful agent in the real estate market. They are not aggressive, but are passionate and work hard to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own.
The Skills You Need to Become a Successful Estate Agent Communication SkillsAlso read: Top 9 WordPress Lead Generation Plugins in 2023
Listen To Your ClientsThe art of listening is a talent that far from few have and or master. Your clients do not need a house, and a house is just a tool they use to solve something else. Slow up and build an amazing door side manner to listen to your clients’ needs. Understand how they want to be communicated to. Always assume difference, because some prefer text, while others prefer a phone call, and others prefer emails.
Be Honest & CaringSometimes what your clients need is not out there, so you need to be able to explain to them what is out there. The market, perhaps the last time they bought or sold, has drastically changed, so their thoughts are outdated. Before it might have been a buyer’s market and today it might be a seller’s market.
Do Your Research Prior To Meeting With Your ClientsA great REALTOR® will still print out the MLS sheets for their clients, highlight important things, put them in order, and staple them for their clients.
Plus, they will include comps for each home and include how quickly the homes are selling and how they are tending. In addition to this, they will provide local factual information on the community and surrounding areas for things like shopping, parks, and well-known public things.
Also read: Top 10 IT Skills in Demand for 2023
Stay Current On Industry TrendsBe actively involved by studying your local and national trends. This will mean always looking at what is active, what is under contract, and what has sold. Then read, listen, and watch trusted national resources to help you keep a national pulse on the overall market.
Find A Mentor, Coach, and Training SupportIf that is not your brokerage, you will either want to find a new real estate brokerage that functions this way or pay for some awesome coaching. This will help you improve your real estate agent skills.
Be Professional, Presentable, and LikableA lot of real estate agents see people talking a big game on videos on Youtube or Facebook, so they think they too can look at that part prior to even researching if those people even produce a single sale.
You will want to look and act professionally. If lower-paying jobs look and act more professional than you, then you will have to wonder where your career is going to take you. Then you will want to be likable. Remember, likable does not mean friends.
Be Easy To ContactBeing easy to reach is critical. You do not want real estate clients having to work hard to reach you to help you make a living. You should have set hours of work and make those hours clear. This could mean having two different cell phones and laptops and you turn your cell phone and laptop off when your business hours end.
Also read: 9 Best Cybersecurity Companies in the World
Adopt Real Estate TechnologyDorrmat focuses on keeping real estate agents current when it comes to real estate and technology. What technology can help your clients have a better experience? Will you need to learn how to use it yourself? You will want to constantly be listening to reviews of new technology from agents and clients.
If it is something good and can make your clients’ experience that much better or it can make you deliver that much better of a client experience, then think about adopting it. Then as a real estate agent, make sure you belong to a tech-savvy real estate brokerage.
Remove BarriersYou want to remove the barriers for your prospects and clients. This is a multi-layered thought. This can be as simple as them being able to reach you their way.
This could mean adding a bot on your website, having communication through social media, SMS communication, email communication, and simply picking up the phone when they call during business hour communication, and if you cannot, then have an answering service do this.
Also read: 10 Best Chrome Extensions For 2023
Follow Up With Every LeadAs a successful real estate agent, you will want to follow up with every lead. Technology can help you with this and so can two old-school items. Every real estate agent should have a great CRM with reminders in place, a large dry erase board and a spiral notebook.
Seek FeedbackThis means R should be asking the front office and back office of their real estate brokerage how they are doing. Then, ask your lender and escrow relationships.
Also read: 10 Types of Developer Jobs: IT Jobs
In Summary Chiranjit SinhaChiranjit Sinha is a freelance writer who offers ghostwriting, copy writing and blogging services. He works closely with B2B and B2C businesses, providing digital marketing content that gains social media attention and increases search engine visibility. He is also a SEO consultant and blogger.
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18 Spring Real Estate Marketing Ideas To Make Business Bloom
The real estate market has seen some drastic changes over the last year. From white-hot to cooling off, real estate businesses have been challenged to adapt to volatile markets while trying to keep their current clients or residents happy–and attract new ones!
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So how can you keep your real estate marketing fresh for the spring season and continue seeing great results? We’re sharing 18 spring real estate marketing ideas that will have your business blooming.
18 spring real estate marketing ideasTry these ideas to bring in new clients, increase word-of-mouth marketing, and build community in your area.
1. Refresh your social media profilesOne easy way to put a little spring in your social media game is to give your social media profiles a refresh. Update your Facebook cover photo, choose a new profile picture, or spring-ify your logo, and make sure you’ve added some recent pictures to your albums of sold or available homes.
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This is also a good time to make sure you’re posting regularly across your channels. If you’re in need of some inspiration, social media holidays are always a good place to start.
Use these cute spring Instagram captions (with templates!) to check one more item off your to-do list.
2. Get into short-form videosAnother way to up your social media game this spring is to create TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. More and more real estate agents are getting into these formats because they can help you reach a wider audience–plus, it’s an engaging way to share information.
During the height of the pandemic when in-person showings were happening less frequently, real estate agents were using TikTok and Instagram Reels to showcase their listings. And they’ve continued finding new ways to use these video formats since in-person showings have resumed. (One real estate agent even said TikTok changed her life!)
If you’re not ready to commit to creating a TikTok account, start with Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts to test the waters. Try creating video tours of your recent listings, short informational videos about the home-buying process, or even debunking real estate myths you’ve heard.
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You can then cross-promote these videos on your other social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
3. Try a spring social media contestWhile on the topic of social media, if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to improve engagement and grow your following, a spring social media contest is your answer!
Facebook contests and Instagram giveaways are really flexible, so you can tailor them to your specific business and goal. Here are some ideas to try:
Have your audience share a picture of their favorite local place and tag your business on Instagram or Facebook for their chance to win. (This is a great way to get user-generated content, too!)
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4. Use the right spring real estate hashtagsAs you plan your spring real estate marketing calendar, it’s important to incorporate the right hashtags into your posts. You’ll want to find a mix of local hashtags, industry-relevant hashtags, and seasonal or trending hashtags to help your posts reach a wider audience.
Here are some ideas to get started:
#[city]realestate
#[city]realestateagent
#[city]realestatemarket
#[city]realtor
#[city]realestatebroker
#[city]broker
#[city]living
#[city]homes
#[city]
#[state]realestate
#[state]realtor
#springin[city]
#realestatetips
#realestatefacts
#realtorsofinstagram
#luxurylisting
#luxuryhomes
#newhome
#homeforsale
#thingstodoin[city]
5. Highlight local businessesAnother cool social media post idea you can add to your spring real estate marketing is to feature and highlight local businesses on your profiles. These can be your favorite local businesses, new businesses opening in the area, or businesses that are related to homeownership and real estate (think home services or home repair).
By highlighting local businesses, you’re putting on a spotlight on your community and letting prospective buyers know what they can expect from living in your area. It also gives other businesses a nice boost—and they might even return the favor in the future! Make sure to tag the business location or the business in your posts for extra exposure.
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6. Share real estate trivia on social mediaIf you’re looking for more ideas for your real estate social media marketing, you might also consider posting some real estate trivia. This can be done through your TikTok and reels videos or as image posts using a design tool like Canva.
Think about some interesting information—like the average age of a first-time homebuyer, the average cost of maintaining a home for the year, etc.—and post a weekly trivia tidbit using the hashtag #triviatuesday.
This social media series would be an easy way to fill your calendar while also providing helpful or interesting info to home buyers and sellers.
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7. Sponsor a trivia nightSpeaking of trivia, many local restaurants or bars host regular trivia nights. Some of them partner with local businesses or organizations, so you could reach out to local trivia night establishments to see if your business could be a sponsor. This typically entails your business donating or covering the cost of the prize for the winners, and in exchange, you get to attend and give a short spiel about your business.
This can also help you build connections with people in your local community who may be searching for your services—or know someone who is. A lot of new customers for real estate businesses comes down to building and making connections, after all!
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If you’re an apartment community, you can also host a trivia night at your own location and invite your residents to bring their friends! This can help build a connection with prospective renters. (See more of our apartment marketing ideas here!)
8. Host an informational webinar or eventAs more and more people look to buy or sell homes, there’s a lot of opportunity for your real estate business to provide helpful information that can assist them on their journey—and potentially become a client down the line.
Host an informational webinar or event to answer frequently asked questions, bring in an expert to share insights, or educate first-time home buyers on the process.
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9. Create an FAQ page for your real estate websiteSpeaking of frequently asked questions, do you have an FAQ page on your website? If not, this is a great spring real estate marketing idea because it can give you a helpful resource to point prospective clients to as well as a way to make your business more authoritative. It also has positive SEO implications because your FAQ page could rank for local searches related to real estate.
To get started with your FAQ page, think of all the typical questions your clients ask you and organize them into one place. Then work on crafting your answers. You can also ask your clients for feedback about what they wish they had known or what they looked for when searching for a real estate business to partner with.
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By crowdsourcing some of these questions and identifying the most important information prospective clients will be looking for, you can increase your chances of getting found for those searches and becoming the business people turn to for their real estate needs.
Pro tip: Make sure to do local keyword research to find the best keywords to add to your real estate business’s FAQ page.
10. Ask for testimonialsWhen it comes to finding the right real estate business, people tend to do a lot of research. They want to ensure they’re working with a real estate agent, broker, or lender who is trustworthy and has a record of success. That’s where testimonials come in.
If you haven’t already created and featured testimonials on your website or social sites, now is definitely the time to start. If you already have some great testimonials created, it’s a great time to give them a little refresh by adding more.
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Ask your recent clients if they would be comfortable sharing a short quote along with a picture you can feature on your website and social sites. You can streamline this process by creating a Google Form that you can send out that will collect the information in one place.
You can also make this part of your ongoing business process by asking clients to take a picture when they close on their homes and provide a short quote or video that you can share (always ask for permission!).
11. And share them!Once you have your testimonials from happy clients, it’s time to share them! You’ll want to include testimonials on your website—preferably on their own page that users can navigate to from the homepage. You’ll also want to share them on your social media sites as they’re a great way to engage your audience and use social media as a lead generation tool. You never know who will see their friend or acquaintance tagged in your photo and reach out for more information!
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12. Spruce up your business descriptionAnother area of your website that may need a little sprucing up is your business description. You’ll want to take a look at your business description across your full online presence, which also includes your local listings and your social media sites.
Take some time to think about what you want to convey about your business, what it’s important that people know about you, and what sets you apart. We have a whole guide on how to write a business description that can help!
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Want to know how your website stacks up right now? Try our free website grader to get your score!
13. Put together thoughtful (spring-related!) client giftsYour clients are putting a lot of trust (and money!) into their relationship with you. One way to show some customer appreciation is to give them a gift at the close of your working relationship. Some ideas include:
A gift basket with goods from local businesses they can frequent near their new home.
A framed drawing of their new (or old) home as a keepsake.
A nice bottle of wine with etched wine glasses to enjoy outside.
Personalized keychains for their home keys.
Personalized spring-scented candles with a wick lighter.
Your gifts don’t have to be the same for every client, either. You might get to know your clients really well and can put together something you know they’ll like.
This real estate agent gave a customized welcome mat.
This not only serves as a nice way to cap off your time working together, but it can increase your chances of getting referrals later on—people love a thoughtful gesture!
14. Create a client referral programSpeaking of referrals, if you don’t already have a formalized way to ask for referrals, this is a great spring real estate marketing idea to add to your list! People trust people they know to provide recommendations about who to work with—and this is especially true for real estate. Your current and past clients can be your best lead generators. All you have to do is create a referral program and promote it.
Referral programs typically include an incentive for the client to give a referral, so think about what would be enticing for your clients. Perhaps it’s a free cleaning service with a local business, a large gift card, or a local gift basket. You could even ask your current clients what would entice them to refer their friends and neighbors.
Once you have your incentive outlined, you can either create a page on your website with information about your referral program or send an email to your list to promote your program. Make sure to let new clients know about the program too so you can keep the referrals coming in. (Get our email templates for some help with this!)
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If you already have a referral program, you can give it a spring refresh by upping your incentive or just sending out some new promotional materials.
15. Partner with a local organizationAnother spring real estate marketing idea is to partner with a local organization to support throughout the season. I recently attended an open house where a local organization had set up a lemonade stand out front to raise money for their cause. Everyone was loving the refreshments and it felt nice to give back—plus, it’s an easy way for the organization to reach people!
If you don’t want to have the organization present at an open house, you can support them by sharing information on your social media sites, donating a specific amount for the season, or having your team donate their time by volunteering with the organization.
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This is a great way to show your commitment to your local community, build relationships, and use your network for good!
16. Guest blogGuest blogging is a great spring real estate marketing idea because it can help you reach a new audience, build valuable SEO backlinks for your website, and position your business as an authority. Guest blogging entails creating a piece of content for another business’s or organization’s website with you as the author.
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There are many opportunities for those in real estate to guest blog. Consider reaching out to local publications, local blogs (such as micro-influencers, mommy bloggers, or blogs about what to do in your area), local chambers of commerce, or other local businesses related to your industry that have blogs. Many websites welcome guest bloggers and would be happy to feature your insight! Just make sure to choose a topic that aligns with both your business and the publication’s audience.
17. Spring-ify your ad campaigns 18. Try online booking softwareIf you haven’t already added an online booking option for your real estate business, now is the time to try it! You can have potential customers schedule a free consultation right from your website. This allows you to close more customers without putting in the time to coordinate schedules or get them on the phone.
By testing this real estate marketing idea this spring, you can see easily manage new customers while you’re on the go.
Make business bloom with these spring real estate marketing ideasSprucing your real estate marketing up for spring can help you breathe some fresh air into your social media, website, and other marketing channels. By testing out these ideas, you can make business bloom all season long.
Here are those 18 spring real estate marketing ideas to try:
Refresh your social media profiles
Get into short-form videos
Try a spring social media contest
Use the right hashtags
Highlight local businesses
Share real estate trivia on social media
Sponsor (or host) a trivia night
Host an informational webinar or event
Create an FAQ page
Ask for testimonials
And share them!
Spruce up your business description
Put together thoughtful client gifts
Create a client referral program
Partner with a local organization
Guest blog
Spring-ify your ad campaigns
Try online booking software
Want more real estate marketing resources? We’ve got you covered!
Stephanie HeitmanStephanie is the Associate Director of Content for LocaliQ and WordStream. She has over 10 years of experience in content and social media marketing and loves writing about all things digital marketing. When she’s not researching the latest and greatest marketing news and updates, she’s probably watching reality TV with her husband, reading, or playing with her two pups.
Other posts by Stephanie Heitman
7 Tips For Real Estate Facebook Ads That Work (With Examples!)
77% of realtors actively use social media for real estate in some way, shape, or form.
99% of millennials (and 90% of baby boomers) begin their home search online (as opposed to in-person referrals).
1. Use the right imagesThe adage a picture speaks a thousand words is a given when trying to move a house. Especially in today’s COVID-driven market, potential buyers and sellers want to do most of the legwork online, without in-person contact. This means that most real estate transactions start online, which includes social.
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If you want to go the extra mile, virtual staging is now a hot new trend. Virtual staging helps potential buyers see a home in ways never before possible. Of course, be sure to disclose that the images are virtually staged. With such a big purchase at hand, building trust with a potential buyer is critical, and one of the ways to do this is through transparency (see more on this later).
Virtual staging can help potential buyers visualize their potential new home.
Related: Get spring real estate marketing ideas or summer real estate marketing ideas to make business bloom.
If you don’t have a full-blown virtual tour to promote via your real estate Facebook ad, you can always use Facebook’s slideshow feature, live feature, or stories to quickly and cost-effectively utilize video/video-like features without all the typical video production costs.
In the example below, Levinson Real Estate uses a Facebook ad to promote its company video that focuses on soliciting new home sellers.
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3. Think outside of the box when targetingFor example, as a result of the pandemic, remote working options have made suburban neighborhoods hotter than ever. As a result, households have been moving out of crowded cities and into homes with nearby open spaces, parks, or beaches. Highlighting such COVID-friendly features will help your listing stand out in the crowd.
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4. Have a follow-up strategy in placeDid you know that being the first to respond can be all it takes to land your next listing or buyer client? Research shows 50% of consumers will choose to do business with the company or in this case agent that responds to them first.
Potential sellers and buyers know that today’s red-hot market means that timing is everything.
Once you have that hot lead in hand, you will want to keep in contact with your potential client, listing, or buyer through a nurture strategy with content and messaging that underscores your expertise (e.g. reviews, new listings, market trends, closed listings, etc.), which incidentally is also critical to the next tip: building trust.
5. Build trust with your ad copy
Transparency
Both positive and negative reviews
Educational content
There is a difference between highlighting a home’s best features and being untruthful. The latter will not only end up degrading your credibility, but it could also get you in legal hot water. That is where transparency comes in. Yes, tell the great features of your listing, but during the sales process, don’t neglect the downsides as well. Be clear about square footage and upgrades. Don’t be afraid to use tools such as virtual staging for your virtual tour, but make sure the potential buyer does not expect a staged home when doing the in-person tour.
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Related: Find out what trigger words you should use in your ad copy for better results.
When it comes to reviews, many realtors strive for the holy grail of 5-stars, but bad reviews are just as important as the good ones. In fact, 85% of consumers look for negative reviews to make informed purchase decisions, and it is fair to assume that someone looking to hire a realtor will do the same. This is because bad reviews give clients a sense of the worst-case scenario. They want to know what can go wrong to understand how their potential agent will react. If you plan on using a positive review in a Facebook ad, be sure to respond to any negative reviews and work to remedy publicly facing client gripes as the bad reviews will be found.
Educational content is yet another way to build trust. No one likes the hard sell, and we all want to feel like we are getting a good deal. Content marketing is a cost-effective and easy way to achieve the trust-building goal. Home buying trends, mortgage rates, or even how to declutter your home are all great content options that build trust.
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6. Test, repeat, test againImage Source
7. Consider turning to a marketing proJust like your clients rely on your knowledge for their real estate needs, you may want to consider tapping into the expertise of a marketing guru. The upfront investment can translate to overall increased revenue for your business, not to mention a lot less stress. DIY marketing is not for the faint of heart. Successful marketing takes years of practice and expertise. There is a reason that marketing pros typically have college degrees. Ask yourself if you would rather spend your time learning the ins and outs of marketing or focusing on closing deals.
Want more Facebook resources? We’ve got you covered:
Aimee QuemuelAimee is the founder of Codey Communications, a public relations and content marketing firm. She is a published author and has 20+ years of experience devising earned media and content marketing strategies for large companies such as Oracle, Nokia, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, and fast-growth start-ups such as chúng tôi SupportSoft and Big Machines. Aimee currently resides in the beach town of Ventura, CA with her husband, and her kids (both human and canine).
Other posts by Aimee Quemuel
Topic Modeling Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Lda)
Introduction
The internet is a wealth of knowledge and information, which may confuse readers and make them use more time and energy looking for accurate information about particular areas of interest. To recognize and analyze content in online social networks (OSNs), there is a need for more effective techniques and tools, especially for those who employ user-generated content (UGC) as a source of data.
In NLP(Natural Language Processing), Topic Modeling identifies and extracts abstract topics from large collections of text documents. It uses algorithms such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify latent topics in the text and represent documents as a mixture of these topics. Some uses of topic modeling include:
Text classification and document organization
Recommendation systems to suggest similar content
News categorization and information retrieval systems
Customer service and support to categorize customer inquiries.
Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a statistical and visual concept, is used to find connections between many documents in a corpus. The Variational Exception Maximization (VEM) technique is used to get the highest probability estimate from the full corpus of text.
Learning Objectives
This project aims to perform topic modeling on a dataset of news headlines to show the topics that stand out and uncover patterns and trends in the news.
The second objective of this project will be to have a visual representation of the dominant topics, which news aggregators, journalists, and individuals can use to gain a broad understanding of the current news landscape quickly.
Understanding the topic modeling pipeline and being able to implement it.
This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon.
Table of Contents Important Libraries in Topic Modeling ProjectIn a topic modeling project, knowledge of the following libraries plays important roles:
Gensim: It is a library for unsupervised topic modeling and document indexing. It provides efficient algorithms for modeling latent topics in large-scale text collections, such as those generated by search engines or online platforms.
NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) is a library for working with human language data. It provides tools for tokenizing, stemming, and lemmatizing text and for performing part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition, and sentiment analysis.
Matplotlib: It is a plotting library for Python. It is used for visualizing the results of topic models, such as the distribution of topics over documents or the relationships between words and topics.
Scikit-learn: It is a library for machine learning in Python. It provides a wide range of algorithms for modeling topics, including Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF), and others.
Pandas: It is a library for data analysis in Python. It provides data structures and functions for working with structured data, such as the results of topic models, in a convenient and efficient manner.
Dataset Description of the Topic Modeling ProjectThe dataset used is from Kaggle’s A million News Headlines. The data contains 1.2 million rows and 2 columns namely “publish date” and “headline text”. “Headline text” column contains news headlines and “publish date” column contains the date the headline was published.
Step 1: Importing Necessary DependenciesThe code below imports the libraries(listed in the introduction section above) needed for our project.
import pandas as pd import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import nltk from nltk.tokenize import word_tokenize from chúng tôi import WordNetLemmatizer from nltk.corpus import stopwords import gensim from gensim.corpora import Dictionary from gensim.models import LdaModel from gensim.matutils import corpus2csc from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer from wordcloud import WordCloud import matplotlib.pyplot as plt Step 2: Importing and Reading Dataset #loading the file from its local path into a dataframe df=pd.read_csv(r"pathabcnews-date-text.csvabcnews-date-text.csv") dfPython Code:
Output:
Step 3: Data PreprocessingThe code below selects the first 1,000,000 rows in the dataset and drops the rest of the columns except the “headline text” column and then names the new data-frame ‘data.’
data = df.sample(n=100000, axis=0) #to select only a million rows to use in our dataset data= data['headline_text'] #to extract the headline_text column and give it the variable name dataNext, we perform lemmatization and removal of stop-words from the data.
Lemmatization reduces words to the base root, reducing the dimensionality and complexity of the textual data. We assign WordNetLemmatizer() to the variable. This is important to improve the algorithm’s performance and helps the algorithm focus on the meaning of the words rather than the surface form.
Stop-words are common words like “the” and “a” that often appear in text data but do not carry lots of meaning. Removing them helps reduce the data’s complexity, speeds up the algorithm, and makes it easier to find meaningful patterns.
# lemmatization and removing stopwords #downloading dependencies nltk.download('punkt') nltk.download('wordnet') nltk.download('stopwords') lemmatizer = WordNetLemmatizer() stop_words = set(stopwords.words("english")) #function to lemmatize and remove stopwords from the text data def preprocess(text): text = text.lower() words = word_tokenize(text) words = [lemmatizer.lemmatize(word) for word in words if word not in stop_words] return words #applying the function to the dataset data = data.apply(preprocess) dataOutput:
Step 4: Training the ModelThe number of topics is set to 5 (which can be set to as many topics as one wants to extract from the data), the number of passes is 20, and the alpha and eta are set to “auto.” This lets the model estimate the appropriate values. You can experiment with different parameters to see the impact on results.
The code below processes the data to remove words that appear in fewer than 5 documents and those that appear in more than 50% of the data. This ensures that the model does not include words that appear less in the data or more in the data. For example, news headlines in a country will have a lot of mentions of that country which will alter the effectiveness of our model. Then we create a corpus from the filtered data. We then select the number of topics and train the Lda-model, get the topics from the model using ‘show topics’, and then print the topics.
# Create a dictionary from the preprocessed data dictionary = Dictionary(data) # Filter out words that appear in fewer than 5 documents or more than 50% of the documents dictionary.filter_extremes(no_below=5, no_above=0.5) bow_corpus = [dictionary.doc2bow(text) for text in data] # Train the LDA model num_topics = 5 ldamodel = LdaModel(bow_corpus, num_topics=num_topics, id2word=dictionary, passes=20, alpha='auto', eta='auto') # Get the topics topics = ldamodel.show_topics(num_topics=num_topics, num_words=10, log=False, formatted=False) # Print the topics for topic_id, topic in topics: print("Topic: {}".format(topic_id)) print("Words: {}".format([word for word, _ in topic]))Output:
Step 5: Plotting a Word Cloud for the TopicsWord cloud is a data visualization tool used to visualize the most frequently occurring words in a large amount of text data and can be useful in understanding the topics present in data. It’s important in text data analysis, and it provides valuable insights into the structure and content of the data.
Word cloud is a simple but effective way of visualizing the content of large amounts of text data. It displays the most frequent words in a graphical format, allowing the user to easily identify the key topics and themes present in the data. The size of each word in the word cloud represents its frequency of occurrence so that the largest words in the cloud correspond to the most commonly occurring words in the data.
This visualization tool can be a valuable asset in text data analysis, providing an easy-to-understand representation of the data’s content. For example, a word cloud can be used to quickly identify the dominant topics in a large corpus of news articles, customer reviews, or social media posts. This information can then guide further analysis, such as sentiment analysis or topic modeling, or inform decision-making, such as product development or marketing strategy.
The code below plots word clouds using topic words from the topic id using matplotlib.
# Plotting a wordcloud of the topics for topic_id, topic in enumerate(lda_model.print_topics(num_topics=num_topics, num_words=20)): topic_words = " ".join([word.split("*")[1].strip() for word in topic[1].split(" + ")]) wordcloud = WordCloud(width=800, height=800, random_state=21, max_font_size=110).generate(topic_words) plt.figure() plt.imshow(wordcloud, interpolation="bilinear") plt.axis("off") plt.title("Topic: {}".format(topic_id)) plt.show()Output:
Topic 0 and 1
Topic 2, 3 and 4
ConclusionTopic modeling is a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding large collections of text data. Topic modeling works by discovering latent topics and the relationships between words and documents, can help uncover hidden patterns and trends in text data and provide valuable insights into the underlying structure of text data.
The combination of powerful libraries such as Gensim, NLTK, Matplotlib, scikit-learn, and Pandas make it easier to perform topic modeling and gain insights from text data. As the amount of text data generated by individuals, organizations, and society continues to grow, the importance of topic modeling and its role in data analysis and understanding is only set to increase.
The code can be found in my github repository.
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