Myrtle Beach Area Vacation Rentals at Brunswick Plantation & Golf Resort

Millions of families, golf groups, and friends who choose the Myrtle Beach area for their vacations each year search for condos and vacation rentals with style, comfort, and distinction.

Brunswick Plantation is such a place.

Located only a short distance from the heart of Myrtle Beach, yet close enough to all the excitement offered on the Grand Strand, Brunswick Plantation & Golf Resort offers an elegant setting that exceeds local standards for luxury and style, while preserving the time-honored elegance and charm of the south.

Brunswick Plantation is a 1,400 acre plantation-style resort located on the northern tip of the Grand Strand in Calabash, North Carolina, just a few miles north of Myrtle Beach, offering unsurpassed luxury condominiums with charm and grace, whether or not you enjoy the game of golf.

If you do love golf, our three courses with 27 challenging holes are right outside your door, and there are over 100 golf courses in the Grand Strand area as well.

Our indoor and outdoor swimming pools, jacuzzis, fitness center, and 19th Hole restaurant are tastefully woven into the tapestry of Brunswick Plantation, making for a memorable vacation with style and grace for your entire family or group.

The Top Four Questions to Consider When Choosing A Condominium Insurance Policy

Condominiums and townhouses have special insurance needs. They don’t need as much insurance as a house, but owners have more to insure than a renter. The insurance needs for a condo owner include personal property and liability coverages. Special policies for condominium owners, known as form HO-6, will provide the liability and personal property protection a condominium owner needs.

As a condominium owner, one needs to insure not only their personal possessions in the condo, but also any built in units such as cabinets, fixtures, appliances and shelves. In addition to covering the personal property, a condo owner also needs liability coverage. The liability portion of the policy would cover injures or damage to people or property that the condo owner would be liable for.

Below is a checklist of the top four questions to consider when choosing a condominium insurance policy:

1. What are your ownership and insurance responsibilities in the condo association’s Master Deed (the insurance requirements the association expects from you)?

2. Does the policy you are considering include broad water damage coverage for problems such as sewer and drain back-ups?

3. Does your condo association provide comprehensive or blanket coverage to protect you against other condo owners who may not have adequate coverage?

4. Do you have expensive personal items such as jewelry or furs that you may need additional personal property coverage for?

How to Negotiate Real Estate Commissions

Real estate commissions are negotiable. But what does that mean, exactly, to negotiate real estate commissions?

How can you ask an agent to charge less, to reduce her fee? And why would an agent agree to do so? These are reasonable questions that confuse sellers. Many outside the real estate profession don't truly understand how commissions work or how real estate agents earn a living.

You can't successfully negotiate if you don't understand the inner workings. Then, there are those who simply believe that real estate agents make too much money anyway so they should give some of it back. Which is not a strong argument and not likely to entice an agent to discount her paycheck.

There are better ways to go about it, and here are a few workable strategies on how to logically and equitably negotiate commissions. Remember, any Joe off the street can hire a discounter at cheap prices. Because the best that you can hope for is to hire an experienced full-service real estate agent at a discounted price . . . read more about how to Negotiate Real Estate Commissions.

THE Key to Real Estate Success...Always be Prospecting!

A majority of your time in this business will be spent prospecting...that is if your goal is to succeed. ABP (Always be Prospecting) It is the most basic, critical element of success. It is imperative you develop and follow a plan. Build your plan around annual, monthly, weekly and daily prospecting activities. Demand of yourself a weekly minimum number of prospecting contacts. If you are new to the real estate business, 90-95% of your time should be spent asking for business. Do not let pending contracts or any other activity take you out of the business of prospecting every day. Prioritize your prospects, track your results and maintain a simple follow up plan. No other task in the real estate business can be performed until you have a person who is ready, willing, and able to buy or sell.

Regardless of what prospecting method you use, the goal is the same! The main objective is to establish rapport, put the client at ease, minimize their perception of the threat you represent and always direct your dialogue towards their needs. Your goal is to turn a prospective lead into an appointment with a motivated buyer or seller.

When qualifying a prospect you must ask a lot of questions to help you determine their needs and whether pursuing them is the best use of your time. Remember: Questions Attract...Statements Repel. Listen carefully to the answers, take notes and show concern and a willingness to help solve any problems or needs that you uncover. The answers you receive are not only the client’s needs, but also tell you what methods to use to meet those needs. These answers will also help you personalize your proposal to secure the client.

You may get objections. Do not be afraid. Objections are a good thing. Objections are simply another form of a question or concern or an indication that you have not totally gained their total rapport. It can simply mean a prospect has not made a decision. Always remember, for every no you are one step closer to a yes. When you have determined that the client is motivated to make a move in the foreseeable future, close.

Real Estate Marketing for New Agents

Marketing advice for new real estate agents:

When I talk to real estate agents who are new to the industry, one of the first questions they ask is, "How can I compete with veteran agents?" Or more specifically, "How should I conduct my real estate marketing program to compensate for my inexperience."

My response: "Take experience out of the equation, and focus on lead generation."

Remove Experience from the Equation

Veteran real estate agents were "newbies" at some point. They got past that stage, and so can you. In fact, everybody in the entire world has been new to something at least once in their life. We are new to elementary school, middle school and high school. We are new to the working world. We are new to people, places and social situations.

Everyone knows what it's like to be the new guy or gal. So why sweat it?

As a real estate agent, you'll find that most clients judge you by your knowledge, your personality and your professionalism. And here's the good news -- you can bring those things to work with you on Day 1.

Focus on Lead Generation

Some marketing "experts" will tell you to promote your brand and keep yourself "top of mind" with your prospect area. Those things are okay over the long-term. But if you're relying on them to generate business in the short-term, you better have some living expenses tucked away. It's going to be a long wait.

Here's where you, as a new real estate agent, can actually outperform the veterans you're up against. Build a better lead-generation program. Instead of relying too heavily on branding or top-of-mind awareness (secondary marketing strategies, by the way), focus on generating leads you can turn into clients.

Here are three specific ways to outperform the veterans in your area:

Be More Visible

Get yourself a website and start learning about search engine visibility. Search engines don't care how long you've been in business or how many clients you have. They will rank a popular, well-optimized website over an older, more stagnant website much of the time.

Build a strong web presence, get some people linking to it, publish press releases and articles online, and you'll make your website more visible to the search engines. See the resource mentioned at the end of this article for more.

Be More Proactive

Build an exclusive "must read" report around a hot topic in your area. Make it provocative and thought-provoking, not just another "Tips for Home Buyers." Urban sprawl is a great example. If there's development in your area, create a report along the lines of "How Urban Expansion Affects Your Property Values."

Choose a topic that matches your audience (buyers, sellers, affluent, middle-class, etc.). Build a direct mail postcard campaign to promote the report. Send people to a web page where they can sign up for it with only an email address. Make it easy for them.

You've just built your first lead-generation program, and no experience is necessary!

Be More Creative

Why not partner up with a mortgage professional, a home inspector or both to launch a home-buying seminar series? Make it free, easy to sign up for, and fun! Come up with a creative angle for it, like "The Modern Real Estate Process" or "Mortgage 101 for the Mathematically Challenged." Invite your local news to cover it (that's the kind of thing they look for on slow news days).

Knock people's socks off with the quality of your presentation and your enthusiasm. Give them your business card and other take-away items. Stick around afterward for questions and chit chat. There will be clients in that group, I guarantee it.

Conclusion

I spun off these ideas in the span of an hour. You might come up with a dozen more of your own. But let me ask you this -- how many of the tactics outlined above require vast experience? That's right, none of them. Be creative. Be proactive. Be enthusiastic and positive. Before you know it, you'll be so busy you'll forget how new you are.

Finding Your Dream Home

Many people believe that it is impossible to find the home of their dreams unless they have very large amounts of money available to buy the home that they want. This common belief is not necessarily true, if you know the right places to look, you will be able to find your dream home and not spend a fortune on it.

If you want to invest in real estate and stop wasting your money paying rent, it is possible and you can even find a home that will cost about the same as your monthly rent payment. All you have to do is find the right resources and know how they will work together. One place that you can look is at home auctions or in areas where there have been bank foreclosures. Many of these homes will be ones that the previous owners could not pay for and the bank was forced to foreclose on them. Because there is no one paying for the house, the bank is having to pay for it and often times the bank will lower the price of the home so that they will not have to keep paying for it.

If you do not know where to look for bargain homes, you can just browse through locations and do some investigating on your own. Many times, the Internet and local real estate magazines are designed to show you the market and they will also include the lowest priced homes in their listings. If you search local resources, you will be able to compare the homes that are available and you will also be able to see the homes that are lower priced because of things such as foreclosures.

When it is time to look for the home of your dreams, you do not even have to set a foot outside. You can instead search what is available using the Internet and real estate magazines and find a home that will fit both your individual style and your budget.

How Sharp Is Your Ax?

February is full of observances and holidays. Among others, there’s Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, and President’s Day (replacing and combining the observances of Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday). Speaking of Lincoln’s Birthday, that’s today. If today is your birthday also, happy birthday!

Regardless of whether you observe Lincoln’s birthday or regard it as just any other day, Abraham Lincoln was credited with many famous (and possibly not so famous) sayings and anecdotes, and I’d like to share one with you today.

Abraham Lincoln, who was known as the “railsplitter,” is reported to have said: “If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend 6 hours sharpening the ax.” This simple remark has a great message – particularly for those of us in sales.

I’m a firm believer in proper preparation. In fact, I regard preparation as the first in the triumvirate of the sales process – along with justification and continuation.
Without proper preparation, it’s impossible to be a consistent performer. Regardless of whether you’re involved in building, sales, or marketing, if you haven’t done your homework you will be at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

It might be possible to get by for a while without it, but preparation is essential for understanding your marketplace, competition, customers, and product – and make sure that you are ready for your presentation.

This knowledge does not just come to you, you have to intentionally acquire it through study, education, and research. Take any two salespeople – one who relies on their instincts and native abilities and the other who has taken the time to investigate their marketplace, study their competition, determine what their customers might perceive as both the strengths and weaknesses of their product, develop a strategy for presenting those strengths and overcoming or minimizing those weaknesses, and practice the delivery of their presentation. Which one do you think will be the more consistent performer? Which one do you think would appear to be more professional to the customer?

Proper preparation takes time. It won’t be totally accomplished during normal business hours so you’re going to have to make a special time commitment to do it – but it will be well worth it as you position yourself to be ready to meet your customers and create the sale.

If you relate it back to Lincoln’s remark, investing time now in preparation will make your future sales presentations that much easier and more effective – regardless of their length.