Flood Map Website

FLOOD MAP WEB SITE
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CyberStar® Patti Oates of Vision Realty, Mena, AR (www.VisionMena.com) sent along this note re. a useful site she discovered. Might be useful for you, too, if you deal with flood plain properties.

“Just found a very useful site that I’d like to pass along: www.interflood.com. I can't tell you how many times I have sifted through a stack of flood maps to locate a property. This program is great, and if it makes a mistake on locating the property you can move it to where it should be. It keeps all your maps in one place on the Internet so you can go back and retrieve. One year contract for 50 maps is just $79.00. I printed it to a PDF file for upload to our MLS for associated documents. I can already tell that this one will save me time, which converts to money. I also use it as a listing tool. I hand a client a flood map showing them whether their property is in a flood zone.”

USING YOUR VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

By now, you know what a Virtual Assistant is: someone who does specific real estate tasks for you and, probably, for other agents. The VA is usually not in your office or even in your area (I am in Virginia, my VA is in Texas) yet can take care of the “little things” that make our businesses grow but that we do not have the time or inclination to do: entering our MLS data, conducting followup campaigns, managing our database, etc.

Most of my CyberStars® (www.afhseminars.com/cyber.htm) now use VA’s. Here is a testimonial from CyberStar® Joan Prout of RE/MAX Villa Realtors, Jersey City, NJ (www.JoanProut.com) that hopefully will contain some ideas you can use with your VA, should you have one. Remember: you either have an assistant, in this case a VA who can live anywhere, or you are one!

“I have had a VA as a client care manager for about 3 years now. I try to delegate anything that doesn't require her physical presence in NJ or a NJ real estate license. She can't get keys copied or hang signs, but she does the following, among other things:

q My PowerPoint presentations
q Sends out prelisting packages
q Does my listing maintenance and weekly client updates
q Designs my website
q Enhances my realtor.com ads
q Writes my Craigslist ads
q Sets appointments
q Calls for feedback
q Designs and prints flyers.

“She is also my first line of technical support and my executive assistant. She always knows the details of my travel itinerary, whether the trip is for business or pleasure. Sometimes it feels a little weird, but I fill in her name and contact information on the airline information cards you get before boarding an international flight!

“While I was at our CyberStar® Summit in San Antonio recently, I emailed her a couple of projects to start work on. I almost never use more than 10 hours a week of her time, and I get service 7 days a week. Actually, my VA now has 2 onsite people working for her, so I now get 3 VAs instead of just one.”

NOTE: If you are looking for a good, pre-qualified Virtual Assistant, be sure to visit www.CyberStarVA.com. There, you will find a lot of information on VA’s as well as a membership directory of VA’s we have certified.