Why Real Estate Professionals Should Take Advantage of Instagram

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Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms today. Every day, millions of photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram around the world. As this platform continues to grow in popularity, it is also being utilized in the real estate industry as a tool for uploading images of property listings and promotional content. With this, Instagram is one of the best platforms for targeting a younger generation of homebuyers who are incredibly active on social media. Continue reading and discover a few reasons why real estate professionals should take advantage of Instagram in 2019.

Instagram is Free

One of the most appealing characteristics of Instagram is that it is free to use. With this, using Instagram will not affect your marketing budget, nor does it take a significant amount of time to use. Due to its immense popularity, many adults are already familiar with this social platform. The addition of new features and real-time updates has led helped Instagram to evolve as an excellent way to communicate with buyers and sellers using this platform.

Showcase your listings

Pictures and videos play a significant role in the real estate industry, making Instagram the perfect platform for showcasing a property listing. For instance, you can easily use Instagram to promote upcoming events such as open houses or networking events. It’s user-friendly interface and ease of access makes Instagram one of the best digital marketing platforms available today.

High engagement rates

Over time, a user will eventually gain a following on Instagram. By utilizing a series of content-based algorithms, Instagram works to send recent posts with the most likes towards the top of a user feed. For this reason, businesses on Instagram should post oft

n to generate higher levels of traffic, which should also lead to more engagement.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.