Real estate marketing is, to me, still locked in the 1950s in some ways.  I don't know, maybe it works. You see plenty of reasonably successful agents with their high school pictures on bus stop benches or grocery carts.

That said, I still think the brokerages of the future will have to be media centers. Print marketing is becoming progessively less effective. Television and radio are, for agents, too expensive, not the least of which is because the product being advertised has such a short life. But selling homes in the Orenco Station area is about to take a new turn.

As part of repackaging myself, I've taken on the marketing of another agent in our Remax office.  Jason Merrit is among the company's top sales people on the west side so far in 2009, but he wants to take himself to the next level.

His listings have already grown in the last few weeks, but more than that, we're pleased to have produced our first video of a house.  Check it out by clicking here. It's a two-minute video of this really great house in Scappoose, but that's only part of it.  The owners appear on camera, relaxed, laughing now and then, and tell what they like about their home.  No one knows more about the house than the owners.

We have another one about to be released--two, actually, a long and a short version of a unique house in North Plains.  This owner narrates much of the movie and wanted both a long and short version for posting to different websites.

Speaking of which, that's where these videos go. They do not stand alone, but instead get posted to multiple sites, where they are seen my hundreds of thousands of people.  But it's a targeted group, because most of them are people who are actually looking for a house in a particular area.