by Macrealty Marketing Team | Apr 15, 2015 | Company
Macdonald Realty was Recognized for Outstanding Referral Services
Macdonald Realty received the prestigious Global Alliance Award for the Most Outgoing Cross Border referrals from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® (LeadingRE), a global network of more than 500 top independent real estate firms. The award was presented at the network’s Annual Awards Gala this spring during LeadingRE Conference Week in Las Vegas. This was Macdonald Realty’s third consecutive year winning this award, showcasing our position as a local BC company with strong international connections.
Also, in the Marketing category Macdonald Realty received honorable mentions for their 2014 Corporate Brochure of Integrated Real Estate Services and their 2014 Recruitment Video in the Interactive Media / Video category.
“An innovative and creative approach to marketing is critical for success in today’s real estate market. Our award-winning firms have distinguished themselves by conveying their firms’ unique character, while providing essential information to home buyers and sellers.”
Macdonald Realty is the sole Vancouver representative of LeadingRE (www.LeadingRE.com), the largest network of premier locally-branded firms in more than 50 countries. LeadingRE provides its affiliates with an extensive range of brokerage services, which include lead generation, cross-market referrals, branding support, luxury marketing, online exposure, technology systems, and industry-leading professional development.
For more information on placing a referral with our award winning referral team, please email [email protected] or call 1-877-278-3888.
by Macrealty Marketing Team | Dec 22, 2014 | Community
Dear Friends, Clients, and Colleagues,
In lieu of cards or gifts this Christmas, Macdonald Real Estate Group (MREG) will be making a financial contribution to the British Columbia Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Many families across Canada are impacted by heart disease, and in the last few years MREG has been affected in several distinct ways. Firstly, two of our long-time managers had major heart surgery; thankfully, both are now recovered and living active lives.
Secondly, on two separate occasions, agents in the Macdonald Realty Victoria office were able to administer life-saving CPR to clients who suffered massive heart attacks. We are thrilled that as a company we were, in the words of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, able to help ‘create more survivors’.
Our contribution will specifically go to support research and education in British Columbia.
If you would like more information about the work of the BC Heart and Stroke Foundation, you can visit their website heartandstroke.com.
Merry Christmas/Season’s Greetings,
Jonathan Cooper
Vice President, Operations
Macdonald Real Estate Group Inc.
by Macrealty Marketing Team | Aug 11, 2014 | In The News
Websites help newlyweds raise money to put toward real estate goals
Newlyweds tend to receive many gifts that end up in the trash or never see the light of day.
Nowadays, many couples have been living together for years before they actually tie the knot, so they’ve probably got the silverware and salt-and-pepper shakers covered.
But what if newlyweds could channel the generosity of all their family and friends towards a big-ticket item of their choosing, like a down payment for a home?
That’s a strategy that people who are set to receive a wave of gifts for a special occasion may take more and more as crowdfunding continues to gain traction.
People have long been using Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other mainstream crowdfunding sites to raise cash for all manner of pursuits.
But more recently, niche crowdfunding sites have been popping up. A number of them focus on helping people raise cash for real estate-related pursuits, including cobbling together enough cash for a down payment.
Feather the Nest, for example, lets users create pages where they can use text, photos and video to describe what real estate aspirations they want contributors to help them fund. Users then share their campaigns through email and their social media accounts.
People can turn to Feather the Nest whenever they want to try to drum up cash for real estate goals, but the site was designed to help people capitalize on the outpouring of generosity that typically comes with special occasions.
The best example would be a wedding, said Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Lindsay Oparowski, CEO of Feather the Nest. The spread of honeymoon registries like Honeyfund.com and Traveler’s Joy show that many couples are keen on funneling the goodwill of friends and family towards a single purpose, rather than sitting back to accept a hodgepodge of smaller gifts.
Screen shot showing sample DownPaymentDreams.com campaign.
Oparowski envisions soon-to-be-married couples sharing their campaigns for real estate projects with friends and loved ones and posting them to their wedding websites. The campaigns could either complement the wedding gift menus that couples commonly offer up to family and friends, or they could replace them altogether.
That way, you end up with a house, not “mismatched placemats,” Oparowski said.
Feather the Nest isn’t the only company trying to help people crowdfund down payments. Gift registries Hatch My House and DownPaymentDreams.com both target couples who would prefer down payment assistance over cutlery and candlesticks.
Launched by Wilmington-North Carolina-based real estate agent Teresa Krebs, DownPaymentDreams.com acts as an agent referral service, offering couples a refund of the site’s registration fee and a gift card to a home improvement store in exchange for working with an agent handpicked by the site. Krebs said 20 couples a month sign up on average, with close to 800 having registered since the site launched in 2009.
“In this generation, so many people are wanting to buy a house and they already have furnishings and towels and pots and pans and things like that,” Krebs said. “Among my group of friends that’s what people really wanted for a wedding gift — cash for a down payment.”
HomeFunded.com launched last year, but the website is still listed as being in beta testing.
Hatch My House has helped people raise about $1.7 million for down payments, $200,000 for remodeling and renovations and $100,000 for furnishings and decorations, according to Rieve MacEwen, who founded Hatch My House in 2009 with his wife Erin-Marie. More than 2,000 registeries have received funds on the site, he added.
According to Hatch My House, the average price of a wedding gift is $125, while the average number of gifts for a wedding is 70. That means, theoretically, the typical couple using the site would raise $9,000 to put towards a down payment if every wedding gift went towards their campaign.
PRIMARQ is taking a less romantic approach to the enterprise: The crowdfunder is attempting to enable buyers to obtain down payment assistance from investors in exchange for slices of their home equity.
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Screen shot showing Feather the Nest’s campaign directory page.
Oparowski, who was previously a marketing director for two brokerages, said that agents could recommend Feather the Nest to people who are on the fence about buying, or use it as a “touchpoint” to maintain contact with past clients.
The site will generate revenue by taking a cut of the funds users raise through campaigns, but also plans to sell sponsorships to agents, where nest owners would receive some cash for permitting an agent’s advertising to appear next to their campaigns.
This article was originally posted on Inman News, June 30, 2014. Written by Teke Wiggin.
View the original post at Inman News.
For more information contact Macdonald Realty at 1-877-278-3888
by Macrealty Marketing Team | Jun 18, 2014 | Company, In The News
Macdonald Realty is a proud member of the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World ® (LeadingRE), a global affiliate network of independent real estate firms. We are pleased to announce that two years in a row, Macdonald Realty-LeadingRE is the number one selling network (by unit sales) in North America – more than Remax, Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker, and other well known real estate brokerages.
In addition, Macdonald Realty has continued to be consistently strong in the rankings for the REAL Trends 250 Survey, placing in the Top 10 of the Largest Brokers in Canada and Top 5 of Independent Brokers in Canada.
REAL Trends is a company based in Denver Colorado that has been ranking the Top 500 American residential brokerages since 1988 and has been ranking Canadian brokerages since 2009.
