Lightbound 3D​ &​ Justo Home Brokerage Streamline the Home Buying Process

The two real estate service providers have partnered together to save home sellers across the GTA hundreds of dollars and simplify their selling process.

In recent months, ​Lightbound 3D and Toronto’s hottest new real estate concept ​Justo Home Brokerage have partnered together to assist home buyers in their real estate journeys. The two companies are hoping to streamline the intimidating home selling process by partnering together and creating a unified experience for sellers that need help in selling and presenting their home.

Sellers that approach the real estate brokerage are now being connected with ​Lightbound 3D representatives to have a photo shoot and 3D virtual tour rendered of their property while working with their Justo agent. The partnership makes the selling process more efficient and less stressful by having multiple services available in the same selling experience.

Launched in the summer of 2018, Justo uses a client-centric platform. They offer cashback to buyers and transparent low rates for sellers, as well as comprehensive service. Their mandate of providing better value and fair services is now reflected in their partnership with ​Lightbound 3D.​

“Our mission has always been to bring fairness to the industry, and that starts with making the selling process transparent and efficient,” said Daphne de Groot, CEO and Co-founder Justo. “We’re already saving our customers thousands of dollars throughout the buying and selling process, and now we’re really happy to be offering even more value to our brand and services.”

Managing partner of ​Lightbound 3D,​ Jonas Lood, claimed that the partnership was a no-brainer, being that both companies share similar values: "Our goal is to provide the best real estate experience for every home buyer in Canada." said Jonas.

Both Justo and ​Lightbound 3D hope that their partnership advocates for a more fair and efficient real estate industry, where buyers no longer feel pressured and intimidated by realtors. For more information on the partnership and both Justo’s and Lightbound 3D’s services, please visit ​www.justo.ca or lightbound3d.com/

Now you can digitally view and MEASURE 3D Spaces

We have launched an enhancement to all our 3D Models. With Measurement Mode you have the ability to share measurements with anyone on your team directly from your 3D Digital twin. Contact us today to learn more!

Are you ready to buy a home?

Take this Real Estate Quiz by Justo brokerage to learn if you’re ready to make the biggest purchase decision in your life!

First Time Home Buyer Incentive

Do you need help qualifying for the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive? The FTHBI makes owning a home in Canada cheaper than ever. Find out what it is, its specifics, and how to qualify for it in this article from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) - The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive.

Work Together. Anytime. Anywhere.

Providing venues with game changing Virtual Reality and 360 Diagraming. Check out our latest model at the Globe & Mail Centre in Toronto.

One-On-One Personalized Shopping Experience with Lightbound 3D

Personalized one-on-one shopping can now be experienced with Lightbound 3D from anywhere!

Cadillac Live, launching exclusively in Canada, connects online shoppers for video conversations with the automaker’s brand ambassadors at a showroom in Toronto. The ambassadors can answer questions and physically show customers around vehicles, then direct them to a nearby dealer if they’re interested in buying. Vehicles and showroom can be experienced in True Immersive 3D.

Check out the 3D Lounge

Virtual Tours get clicked 40% more than listings with no tours!

The reason for these successes is that 3D virtual tours engage buyers in a way words and photos can not. They offer ‘location intelligence’ and a visceral sense of a property that increases emotional engagement. And unlike an open house or home visit, with a 3D virtual home tour, the prospect can take their time – from wherever they may be located – to delve into any feature that would make a house or apartment feel like a home.

• Virtual tours get clicked on 40% more than listings without virtual tours

• Properties featured with virtual tours get 95% more phone inquiries

• Properties featured with virtual tours receive 65% more email inquiries versus those without

• Virtual tours generate 49% more qualified leads

All eyes are on the internet today, if you don’t capture your audience right away, it’s an opportunity lost!

Perfect content and advertising Strategy at Walmart!

Toronto startups look to disrupt Canada’s real estate model!

From the Globe & Mail November 12, 2018 | By: SHANE DINGMAN, REAL ESTATE REPORTER

Two Toronto-area startups are betting that a combination of technology, regulatory changes and consumer behaviour have created the conditions necessary to finally bring about a transformation of the country’s traditional real estate model.

Regan McGee, chief executive of startup Nobul (which he describes as a marketplace platform where potential buyers and sellers get bids for service from realtors), says that, in recent years, accumulation of anti-trust and competition regulations in the United States and Canada have pushed the industry to a tipping point. “They created an environment where a company like us could exist. [Before now] it would have been really hard. This is the way everything is going,” he said.

“The industry is changing, and I could feel the change coming,” says Vicki Schmidt, co-founder and broker of record for Justo, a new twist on the online discount brokerage.

These two companies are just a few of the real estate-focused startups popping up or expanding across the country, but they have one thing in common: The market opportunity they sense is to put more negotiating power, and perhaps more cash, in the hands of the real estate buyers and sellers. That could also put pressure on the traditional commission structure and service offering from agents.

Justo’s idea is mainly a tech-enabled update on an old idea: the discount brokerage. Founded by Daphne De Groot, an Israeli immigrant on a startup visa (who has dabbled in real estate developing, reality television and marine biology in an interesting career path) who partnered with Ms. Schmidt to try to build something more like the real estate model in her home country.

“In Israel, when you go buy a house, you have something like Kijiji. You go on the site, you pick a house you like, you just buy it directly … you don’t do it with an agent, just a lawyer and that’s it,” Ms. De Groot said. “When I tried to do it here myself, I had no access to any of the data: who bought the house, when, comparables.”

With an outsiders eye, she dissected the traditional real estate model in Canada and realized two things: Agents were necessary here, for many reasons, and enough of the data were getting to the public that some of the functions of agents could be shared between buyer and agent. Justo is designed to keep the agent involved, while operating a VOW-type website that helps buyers and sellers see what’s happening in the market, and wrap it all up into a couple of lower fee options.

Justo’s fee model is calibrated for the expensive side of the GTA: If your home purchase is for more than $600,000 (which is about $150,000 lower than the region’s average detached-home selling price), you pay a flat $15,000 in commission. Additionally, while Justo will still split the full traditional 5-per-cent commission with listing agents, it will give buyer clients a chunk of the difference between the $15,000 and the 2.5-per-cent share as a cash-back bonus (the estimated cash-back is posted on all the Justo site’s online listings). “Its a reduction on your house, ‘Money out of the sky,’” Ms. De Groot said. If what you buy is less than $600,000 there’s no cashback and no flat fee, just the usual 2.5-per-cent fee.

For sellers, the structure is a simple reduced fee: 1.5-per-cent commission for 90 days at a guaranteed price, and if they don’t sell in that time, they will reduce the commission to 1 per cent.

Ms. Schmidt says the structure is similar to a friends-and-family deal, adding that what attracted her to Ms. De Groot’s vision was, “The idea of partnering with [clients] and sharing a bit of that commission with them, because they are a big part of that partnership.”

Mr. McGee’s startup, Nobul, comes at the industry with a similar ethos – that the client wants more service than what they get today – but his vision is built on an real estate insider’s view (he’s a former commercial realtor and still has his licence) of an industry that has managed to avoid fundamental change despite the existence of gigantic U.S. property tech companies such as Zillow and Redfin.

“Real estate is super entrenched in doing things the way it’s been done forever,” he said, arguing that no internet company has done to real estate what Uber and Airbnb have done to transportation or hospitality.

The concept is deceptively simple: Buyers or sellers come to Nobul to find an agent and agents on the platform offer a bid for that client, either a straight-up break on the commission or through expanded service offerings. Additionally, a combination of user ratings and reviews will help clients compare bidding agents (someday soon, Nobul also hopes to include agent performance metrics, such as list-price-to-sale ratios, in order to find who truly are the best negotiators).

Unlike traditional online brokerages, agents you find on Nobul don’t work for the startup (350 agents have been actively using the platform since its soft launch in April), they just use the site as a matchmaker to pitch their services.

“Most of the job of being a real estate agent is customer acquisition,” Mr. McGee said. “We’re seeing right now about three-to-one buyers to sellers [browsing on the platform] and a tonne of first-time buyers. Most of the people coming to our platform are millennials … they don’t have a relationship with some real estate agent who got their licence back in the seventies.” Right now, if a buyer is scrolling through Realtor.ca, there’s no easy way to find an agent to help you buy a dream house you spotted. There’s no reasons those buyers wouldn’t like to begin and end their property search online, Mr. McGee says: “This is the way that the whole world is going.”

Of course, open bidding does mean that Nobul could have the affect of compressing commission fees, which agents are often reluctant to do. “Sure, it’s inevitable,” he agrees, but points out that fee compression won’t hurt Nobul’s bottom line. “We make our money not on the commission, but on the property value. We get 20 basis points on the property value … which is $2,000 per million of property value. Fee compression over time will have zero impact on our revenue.”

Further, he says regulators Nobul has spoken with when negotiating entering new markets approve of the company’s goals. “Regulators are trying to achieve transparency, price competition, get rid of price fixing, they wanted the public to be happy with the biggest fees they pay in their lives. Everybody else talks about how it’s the biggest purchase in your life, they often forget to mention it’s the biggest fee you’ll ever pay, too.”

Nobul will need scale in order to work, which is why it is already expanding across Canada and into the United States. To help with that, it has attracted an enviable collection of investors in its multimillion-dollar seed fundraising, including some big-time real estate developers (a notoriously risk-averse group).

“People are looking to what makes life easy for them, where do they get a benefit? Clients want the cheapest quality brokers, this allows a buyer or seller to reach out to hundreds or thousands of brokers,” says Sheldon Fenton, CEO of Reserve Capital, which with Reserve Properties has built more than 12,000 housing units over the past 30 years. Mr. Fenton said that in addition to knowing Mr. McGee and his family, he liked the investing team and management (the board includes Canadian business notable Blake Goldring). “Developers are typically conservative. I invest in a limited number of tech opportunities that are not necessarily real estate driven. This is one we took a shine to – this is a small investment for us – but I put my money up and I believe in their concept.”

Lightbound 3D Welcomes Justo Real Estate as an Alliance Partner

Lightbound 3D is pleased to announce it has partnered with boutique firm Justo Real Estate in Toronto. Justo is an alternative option for buyers and sellers who are frustrated by elite brokerage commissions. Justo is Toronto’s newest concept in real estate, offering comprehensive marketing and real estate services at no extra charge! Professional photography, 3D virtual immersive tours, staging, lawyer and brokerage fees are all included. Justo is data driven and uses the power of technology and efficiently to lower costs, passing on savings to our customers.

Here's looking at you Toronto

We just completed our latest project for the Toronto Globe & Mail Centre. The Globe and Mail Centre’s flexible indoor and outdoor spaces can accommodate up to 400 guests for conferences, award shows, receptions, private celebrations and more.

Equipped with the latest digital AV technology and refined executive-level furnishings, The Globe and Mail Centre is purpose-built, LEED Gold certified and supports a wide range of possibilities.

The Globe and Mail Centre offers catering and rental services through carefully selected preferred caterers and suppliers who share our passion for quality and customer service.

Our Immersive 3D is now available for Event Planning Services

Showcase your venue using life-like, immersive, virtual reality technology that truly brings your property to life. AllSeated’s VR uses 360 diagramming and is a genuine virtual reality tool that is able to bring venues the highest ROI in the history of event technology!

Explore newly built Architectural Masterpiece in Toronto

Piece of Mind

Matterport is the only tool that’s going to sell your home in today’s competitive market.
We are so confident you will be impressed, our Immersive 3D Tour will be offered FREE if your home fails to sell. What do you say?

Book your Immersive 3D Tour package now or call us at 437-775-9000 We will answer all your questions!

Writing an SEO Friendly Blog - Success factors for 2018!

HOW TO MAKE YOUR BLOG ONE-OF-A-KIND IN A NICHE

With business blogging on the rise and generating more leads for B2B companies compared to those that don't blog, you might want to focus on your blog for more SEO benefits and long-term ROI for your business. However, it's not all that simple. It is true: a stellar blog can boost your sales. But it is also true that 53% of marketers consider blogging a #1 priority of their campaigns. More than that, 65% of marketers have increased their use of blogging this year. To cut a long story short, competitors never sleep. To overtake them, your business blog needs to be exceptional. It is not enough to write interesting articles, post them several times a week, and share updates on social media. Everyone does this.

Not very inspiring, huh? Why then do some business blogs stand out, get noticed, and start generating more conversion than traditional marketing efforts? What makes them rock? And what can you do to get into the top league with your blog and make it one-of-a-kind in your niche? Keep reading to find out. 

NO FREELANCERS

Blogging is time and energy-consuming, and that is why most marketers delegate content creation to remote writers. If you hire freelancers to write posts for your business blog, I have bad news for you: Your blog will never sparkle.The problem is, no one knows your product or service better than you. They may be great writers, but freelancers are still not competent enough to create a comprehensive, in-depth content for your niche.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Engage in-house employees. Working in your niche, they know it inside out and can provide you with interesting data or facts from behind-the-scenes of the niche. Even if the copywriting is not absolutely perfect, such content outshines wishy-washy, samey texts found in most blogs. Publish articles from experts only. Guest blogging is a great way to generate content for your business blog but, as with freelancers, be careful when choosing guest writers. If you want to make your blog one-of-a-kind, accept posts from niche experts only.

COMPREHENSIVE CONTENT ONLY

Sorry, but great content doesn’t work anymore. Exclusive does.

According to Dr. Carmen Simon, people forget 90% of what you share with them. In today’s world of information overflow and content shock, when every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a blog and believes they might be helpful to others, we all need content that is actually useful. For your blog to be exceptional in the niche, you need to generate posts which are in-depth, data-driven, and actionable. To win the audience, your blog should teach, solve problems, and give something no one else has. So, no rewrites, no poor paraphrasing of competitors, no generic articles, and no topics other than those related to your niche. A great example is Neil Patel's blog. His research-based long reads on topical issues, written with an authoritative opinion, and presenting valuable knowledge to the audience, are what makes Neil stand out.

SHOW, DON'T TELL

Your comprehensive content attracts visitors and drives traffic to your business website. But what makes people stick around, read rather than scan, and finally convert? Use the techniques of content creation to hook the audience and hold their attention. For your business blog to stand out, forget about writing baseline descriptions and widely known copybook maxims. Instead, show them how to solve their pain points. Make good use of visual storytelling, which enables readers to experience your content through feelings, actions, and visuals.

OKAY, STORIES FIRST.

We retain 70% of information through stories and only 10% from data. Remember those page-turner books you couldn't stop reading? They grabbed you because you felt the story truly happened. It evoked an emotional response from you and a connection with the book’s characters and author. The same works for brands: consider storytelling techniques when writing your blog posts, and your audience will resonate with them.

You don't need to be Stephen King or Ernest Hemingway to craft stories. Just define these key moments:

• What is the problem you are solving?
• What was the insight that inspired you to start?
• What do you do to fix the problem?
• What is your mission?

In her blog, Henneke Duistermaat best described the process of connecting all four moments to eyebrow-raising stories. And the brilliant proof of this technique's efficiency is Jon Morrow's post "How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World." It became the most shareable post at ProBlogger and touched the hearts of more than five million people.

Investing in latest technology will help you get your listing sold!

Our immersive virtual tours aren’t just for luxury listings.

It is proven that agents leveraging 3D immersive tours to win business consolidate their position as technology leaders. They understand the changing real-estate market place and best marketing practices.

Our Matterport 3D Showcase is a better real estate virtual tour: an immersive, 360º virtual experience that not only engages buyers, but delights sellers, and wins you listings.

1 Pingel Road SOLD! First property in the Markham Community of Cornell to sell for over $1 million since November 2017! 

Don't be left out in the cold. Why updating to HTTP is important

Starting in July, Google Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure,” according to a blog post published today by Chrome security product manager Emily Schechter. Chrome currently displays a neutral information icon, but starting with version 68, the browser will warn users with an extra notification in the address bar. Chrome currently marks HTTPS-encrypted sites with a green lock icon and “Secure” sign.

Google has been nudging users away from unencrypted sites for years, but this is the most forceful nudge yet. Google search began down-ranking unencrypted sites in 2015, and the following year, the Chrome team instituted a similar warning for unencrypted password fields.

The Chrome team said today’s announcement was mostly brought on by increased HTTPS adoption. Eighty-one of the top 100 sites on the web default to HTTPS, and a strong majority of Chrome traffic is already encrypted. “Based on the awesome rate that sites have been migrating to HTTPS and the strong trajectory through this year,” Schechter said, “we think that in July the balance will be tipped enough so that we can mark all HTTP sites.”

Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure” starting in July. We can help you enable SSL for your web services to ensure a seamless transition. Contact us today!

Your SEO Checklist for 2018

It's the start of a new year and it's time to review your SEO priorities. Looking back over the years, we see various changes that Google make that SEO managers must follow, or face certain death. There was the Panda updates and then Penguin from Google. These updates have often sent SEO mangers into a frenzy of ‘what ifs’, ‘hows’ and ‘whens’ and indicate the constant evolution taking place. SEO is a process, not an event, and as such managers must constantly review, assess and redefine the priorities for SEO.

1. STRUCTURED DATA

Structured data markup is the technology behind the semantic web and Google’s rich search results. The semantic web is an improved web which delivers more relevant search results to users and more qualified traffic to websites. Structured data is a way of enriching content on a web page that makes it more machine-readable by linking entities together. Vocabularies like Schema.org (vocabularies are the structures you add to your data) allows search engines to create those fabulous rich snippets that contain data like star reviews, opening hours and prices. Not only do they make your search result more eye-catching, they also improve click-through-rate (CTR). Despite numerous studies showing pages that use Schema markup ranked four times higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), the adoption of structured data has remained slow, which means that sites that use structured data will ultimately perform better in 2018.

2. SECURE YOUR SITE WITH HTTPS

In 2014 Google announced that sites that were SSL secure were going to be given a slight boost to rankings. Adoption was relatively slow to begin with because many believed that it would only really impact E-Commerce sites. It is estimated that around 50% of sites that appear on page 1 of Google are SSL secure sites (including non-ecommerce sites), and is predicted to be around 65% by the time 2018 rolls around.If your website still isn’t secure by now, you’re basically leaving rankings on the table. Not to mention leaving your site vulnerable to spam and mock sites with your content, that is just plain annoying.

3. TARGET INTENT MESSAGING

Search intent is what the person using a search engine hopes to achieve through their search. People generally have four (depending on how you want to count them) when the use Google:

• Geographic search: Users want to go somewhere, but don’t know where it is or how to get there. The "place" they want to go could be an actual physical location like a store or it could be a specific page on a website.
• Informational search: Users want to answer a specific question, solve a problem or just find general information on a topic. These people make up the majority of search engine users at any given moment.
• Transactional search: Users want to take a particular action. In the marketing world, this is often called "commercial intent", looking for an actionable outcome, like buying a product or servie on

Optimizing your website content to match your audience’s search intent was vital to SEO in 2017, and it’s only going to get more important for SEO in 2018. 

4. SLOW LOADING WEBSITE PAGES

The biggest reason for page abandonment is slow loading websites. If you're found via a web search and your page does not load, user moves on period. They rarely if ever come back. Google also queries your site for speed, and now also evaluates site speed as part of its ranking criteria. Here are some of the biggest culprits that bog down websites:

1. Unnecessary plugins, tracking codes, advertisements and on-page widgets. These are especially bad if any of them block your main page content from loading. Load any news site and you see what I mean, annoying!
2. Bloated image resources. This has been my pet peeve since the adoption of digital cameras! Optimizing for the web is mandatory. Using HTML to change the dimensions of images is a common mistake. This doesn’t impact file size and therefore doesn’t improve speed. Instead, use your photo editing software’s compression to optimize images for the web. Many programs have "save for web" options when exporting.
3. Uncached assets: Caching tells browsers to store files to load for the next visit. This means users don’t have to wait for an image or stylesheet to download every time the visit a page. This can vastly reduce wait time for repeat visitors. Check out Google’s guide to leveraging browser caching.
4. Uncompressed assets: All modern browsers support gzip compression, which is a method of zipping files to reduce their size by up to 90 percent. Gzip compression needs to be enabled on your web server. Google’s got a great set of resources on how to do this.

Our mission is to continue to provide you with the SEO information you need to promote your brand online. Know what high value keywords your customers use to find your products and services. Be found on the web, and appear on the first page of Google and Bing SERP's (search engine results pages). Please contact us at info@lightbound3d.com or call (437) 775-9000 for a free, no obligation consultation.

GOOGLE UPDATES META TAG DISPLAYS FOR 2018

Meta descriptions can be any length, however up until now, Google generally truncated snippets to less than 250 characters. This limit has now been increased to 350! It's best to keep meta descriptions long enough that they're sufficiently descriptive, so I recommend descriptions between 50–300 characters. Keep in mind that the "optimal" length will vary. It depends on your business requirements. Your primary goal should always be to provide value and drive clicks.

Meta description tags, while not tied to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These short paragraphs are a webmaster's opportunity to "advertise" content to searchers. It gives searchers' a chance to decide whether the content is relevant and contains the information they're looking for from their search query.

A page's meta description should strategically (read: in a natural, active, non-spammy way) employ the keywords that page is targeting, but also create a compelling description that invites a web user to "want to click". It should be directly relevant to your message, and unique from the descriptions for other pages.

STAGING YOUR HOME FOR A 3D SHOWCASE

Weather you are selling a new home or a resale, make sure that you "declutter, clean and depersonalize". Avoid wonky design elements, it will limit your homes appeal. You are aiming for a broad style that would be popular with most prospects visiting your home. We have photographed hundred's of homes, below are our top recommendations for making your staged home a success with our 3D showcase:

• You don’t want the buyer to focus too much on personal style. You want the layout enhanced so the buyers can see themselves in that house.
• The rooms need to flow. You want to make sure you can walk around easily without tripping on anything.
• Accentuate the positive. If you have a beautiful hardwood floor, don’t cover it with a rug.
• Scale the furniture. You may have to remove some of the furniture. If chairs are blocking a fireplace, for example, you will want to move them.
• Highlight all the good qualities of the home and tone down any of its failings.
• Work within a neutral colour range and add only one accent colour.