Meet Our New Hires!
The Boston Logic team has been expanding. Over the past year we have brought on talented and highly skilled professionals to join our Sales, Development, Marketing, and Support teams. Recently, we have had 4 new hires that have been invaluable to both our company and our clients. Learn more about them below:
Erik Poje - Director of Sales
Erik joined Boston Logic in April of 2013 and has been an investor in the company since 2011. He brings 10 plus years of sales management/sales experience in Software As A Service (SaaS) and financial services models working with emerging technology companies such as Percussion Software, ByAllAccounts, Relay Technology Management and a Fortune 500 company in Ameriprise Financial. As Director of Sales, Erik is responsible for developing high performing direct sales teams focused on processes that lead to a scalable and repeatable sales culture to drive rapid revenue growth. This includes the hiring and training of all sales people, setting and managing sales KPI's, and aligning sales and marketing.
Erik graduated Magna Cum Laude from UMass-Amherst's Isenberg School of Management with a BBA, Concentration in Finance.
Outside of work, Erik is a rabid college basketball fan and a voracious reader of all things history and business.
Chad Curll - Project Manager
Chad Curll has been involved in digital culture projects for over 15 years and has lead national and international digital efforts for projects ranging from international symposiums, national awareness campaigns, community management, and social media fundraising. Chad has helped raise over $1,000,000 for charitable causes over the past three years via digital efforts and brings a cross-cultural, cross-generational view to project management to ensure success in today's globalized, digital world.
Mark Coates - Web Developer
Mark Coates fell in love with programming in the second grade when he was introduced to an Apple IIc and the Logo programming language. Since then he's been combining his passion for programming with other interests, making computers slog through MUDs (multi-user dungeons), pop open "door games" for electronic bulletin board software—before the Internet was a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye—and programming "Flight of the Bumblebee" to pump out of the crudest of PC speakers. You know the ones that used to go "BEEP"? Yeah, those. Today it's a Macbook Pro and Ruby for web development. Everyday is an adventure. He commutes to Boston daily from Rhode Island—and loves it.
Joe Heald - Web Developer
Joe Heald has been a web developer for 5 years. He loves learning new things and solving challenging problems. He was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Although he doesn’t miss AC’s casinos too much, he does love a good poker game amongst friends.
If you are interested in joining our team, open positions are listed on our career page.
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Posted on May 22, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News | Leave a Comment
Rentals Driving Construction Boom
The housing market is on the rise as homes are selling faster than ever, and at higher prices. Accompanying the rise in the housing market is a booming construction industry –new single-family homes accounts for 66 percent of all housing construction. Despite the rise in single and multi-family construction, it is apartment buildings that are currently driving the construction boom. Apartment building construction makes up 33 percent of all residential construction as opposed to the average over the past 2 decades of 20 percent. Currently, all of the net addition to residential housing has been through apartment buildings.
Throughout the country, in cities like Houston, Denver, Seattle, Oakland, and Miami, more apartment buildings are under construction in order to keep up with demand. In recent years, rental prices have been rising – by 4.2 percent between 2010 and 2011 and 3.6 percent between 2011 and 2012. Despite the rise in rent, vacancies remain low and there are faster lease-ups.
While, nationwide, it is 44 percent cheaper to buy a home than rent, many circumstances leave families and young professionals choosing to live in apartments as opposed to single or multi-family homes. During the economic downturn, for example, foreclosures left many families transitioning from single-family homes to apartments. Professionals in their early thirties are also holding off buying their first homes and renting for longer periods of their time. With an improvement in the job market, younger professionals are moving out of their parents’ homes and searching for apartments in urban areas. In order to cater to the younger market and make apartments more affordable, developers are building 200 to 300 square feet micro-apartments in cities like New York and San Francisco.
Construction will continue to boom as the economy strengthens and more young professionals seek to live in apartments. Real estate companies, therefore, should expect to remain busy with the rental market in the coming months.
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Posted on April 11, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News | Leave a Comment
U.S. Experiences Rapid Real Estate Growth
Currently here in Boston, the growth in the real estate industry has been extremely energetic. Real estate agents are busy as demand has been the highest it has been in recent years. The number of homes sold in the Boston metropolitan area, for example, has increased by 16 percent compared to 2 years ago. The problem, however, is that there are few available properties for sale in the area. In conjunction with high condo demand, more and more households are looking to rent apartments. A steady economy (unemployment in Boston is 5.9 percent compared to the national average of 7.9 percent) has made Boston a desirable city to live in for recent graduates and seasoned professionals.
In response to the shortage of housing supply, developers have been working to build both condos and apartments throughout the city. 2012 was the best year for residential construction in the area since the economic crisis began in 2008. The growth in the real estate industry in metropolitan Boston has directly created 3,600 jobs in the past year.
It’s hard to believe that the rate of real estate growth in Boston is significantly lower than that of many southern cities. According to Forbes, 7 of the top 10 fastest growing cities in the United States are in the South. Of these 7 cities, 3 are in Texas, with Austin topping the list. Driving the rise in real estate demand is both economic and population growth. Austin’s population, for example, is expected to grow at 2.8 percent in the next couple of years—3 times the national rate.
These high growth cities are able to attract more residents and companies because of their low taxes and relatively inexpensive real estate. Compared to the northeast and many parts of the country, cities on the top-ten list, like Austin, Houston, and Raleigh, have a much lower cost of living and cost of doing business. Many new residents in these cities are those from the Northeast who are search for an overall higher quality of life at a lower cost.
Brokers and agents in these cities are working hard to keep up with the rapidly growing real estate industry. Trends indicate a rise in real estate demand and higher home prices this year, not only in the South, but also throughout the country.
This will be a busy year for real estate brokers and agents as more individuals and families are looking to buy homes. To help agents effectively take advantage of the growing market, the Boston Logic Sequoia Platform offers a real estate lead management tool. This tool will help agents keep track and organize their growing list of clients and tasks. Most importantly for growing real estate markets, the lead management tools enable agents to identify leads most likely to convert.
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Posted on February 28, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News | Leave a Comment
Peabody & Smith Real Estate Website Launch
This month, Peabody & Smith Realty launched their real estate website powered by Boston Logic’s Sequoia platform. Peabody & Smith focuses on Northern and Central New Hampshire’s Lake Region. With over 25 real estate agents in offices in Franconia, Littleton, Plymouth, Bretton Woods, and Holderness, they have become the go-to realtor company in the region.
According to Andrew Smith, Broker and Owner of Peabody & Smith Realty, after over two years of searching for a company that could combine a great front end website, real estate SEO, lead generation and CRM, they decided that the Boston Logic provided the best product—the Sequoia System—to meet their needs. The lead management’s system ability to track activity on each property and communicate that information with the seller was a feature that particularly stood out for the brokerage and drove their decision.
Over the next few months, Peabody & Smith agents hope to continue to expand their understanding of the Sequoia system and fully take advantage of all of the features. We, at Boston Logic, hope that the Sequoia platform will contribute to Peabody & Smith’s successes and help generate more leads in the coming year.
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Posted on February 21, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News, New Real Estate Website Launches, Real Estate Websites | Leave a Comment
Boston Logic to Attend 2013 Leading Real Estate Conference
Next week, Boston Logic is excited to be sending three of our team members to the 2013 Leading Real Estate Conference in Las Vegas. Leading Real Estate is a network of over 500 top independent real estate companies. These brokerages, with 4,600 offices and 140,000 sales associates not only have a presence in the United States, but also in 30 different countries. The conference offers Boston Logic an opportunity to learn from industry leaders and participate in a dialogue about current issues impacting the real estate industry. A variety of workshops and speakers series will engage conference participants of all backgrounds—brokers, relocation managers, international members, marketing staff, and business development professionals.
If you are attending the Leading Real Estate Conference, let us know. We would love to connect! You can find us at Booth 204 on the third level of the Gracia Ballroom on Tuesday, February 26th, and the fourth level of the Mont Royal Commons on Wednesday and Thursday, February 27-28.
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Posted on February 19, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News, Real Estate Lead Management | Leave a Comment
Elaine Kelleher Joins the Boston Logic Family
We are excited to announce that Elaine Kelleher has joined the Boston Logic family in the newly created position of Director of Accounts. Elaine’s 30+ years of experience in real estate will help Boston Logic become a leader in the industry. Below is Elaine’s letter to our clients:
As a very important client to Boston Logic, I want to take this time to announce to you my newly created leadership position with Boston Logic. With it I want you to know that, effective immediately, I will be your go to person, "your liaison", between design, production and marketing for any help with creating, revising and improving your Internet solution platform.
After over 30 years in the real estate industry, of which over 15 of those have been in leadership positions, with the last 6 plus years leading brokerages through some tough times as a trusted adviser and consultant, I decided to turn my efforts into helping brokerages through the myriad of difficulties and decisions they need to make regarding software and web platforms.
I have spent the past four years with a consulting company that offered many technology and real estate solutions to help brokerages, large and small, perform to their potential and position themselves for growth. Through that company I was a Vice President of Development and also was a Product Manager for a large web vendor platform company. Since I was involved in the entire process from sale to launch, I quickly learned process management and found out there are so many more aspects to a web solution than one could imagine that sometimes the obvious is well hidden.
I met David Friedman a little over a year ago at a Leading Real Estate Conference and quickly became impressed with his company's product and delivery. Since we both are in Boston, we had met several times to share thoughts and ideas about the business. We found that we both are very passionate about the endless possibilities to help brokers and agents narrow the gap between consumer expectations in technology and our real estate industry's delivery.
After several discussions between David and I and my doing full due diligence into Boston Logic, the whole team and their challenges and successes, I accepted the newly created position of Director of Accounts and am very excited to be here. I feel that between the great product they develop and my understanding of the real estate vertical we are positioned for great things to come.
Over the course of the next few weeks I will be calling you to introduce myself and my position in person. In the in-between time, please do not hesitate to either ping me back here or shout out to me at Boston Logic. My number is 617.226.9166 extension 40 and my mobile is 617.771.9778. Email is ekelleher@bostonlogic.com and you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, stumbleupon and google+.
I look forward to our conversations and interactions as we continue to enhance your internet presence and narrow that gap between your consumers' expectations and industry delivery.
Best,
Elaine Kelleher
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Posted on February 14, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News | Leave a Comment
Importing Leads on Sequoia Lead Management System Made Easier
Recently, we have made improvements to Sequoia to help real estate brokers and agents import leads into the system more easily. The Sequoia system enables brokers and agents to import leads into their account with the Lead Import tool. Users are able to import leads from either a Google Contacts account or from a CSV file.
With the updated system, agents are able to upload an unlimited number of leads at once. The contacts will render in the background and the system will automatically send the specific user who uploads the leads an email when the upload is complete. A report highlighting any leads that were not entered into the platform will be generated with the email. This may occur if the lead already exists, or if there's a problem with the format of the email entered.
Once the leads are imported, they will populate in the “My Leads” section of the admin page of Sequoia. Brokers and agents will then be able to manage all of their leads efficiently--they can track correspondences, be able to see what kind of properties their leads are searching, and have a history of properties that they have shown.
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Posted on February 12, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News, Sequoia features | Leave a Comment
8 of the Top 20 Real Estate Brokers in Boston are Boston Logic Clients
Recently, Curbed Boston, Boston area neighborhoods and real estate blog, ranked the top 20 real estate brokers in Boston based on the dollar volume of sales and listings from 2012 to 2013. Last year, real estate agents, particularly in Boston, saw an increase in both listings and prices, as the median price of these condos increased by 5.6 percent—similar to national trends—from $474,250 in 2011 to $501,250. The number of condos sold in the city rose by nearly 29 percent from 2011, reaching over 3,000.
According to the Curbed Boston rankings, out of the top 20 real estate agents in the area, 8 work for offices that use Boston Logic's Sequoia platform. These leading firms include Campion & Company, Gibson Sotheby’s, CL Waterfront, Boston Realty Advisors, Warren Residential, Boston Realty Advisors, and Cabot & Company. We were excited to see so many familiar names on the list. Our hearty congratulations to them all!
These are some of the hardest working agents and brokers in the city. We like to think that we've helped them, in some way, but we know that their effort and dedication is what makes them so successful.
References:
Grillo, Thomas. "Hub Condo Sales at Five Year High." Boston Business Journal. 01 Feb. 2013.
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Posted on February 7, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News | Leave a Comment
What the Rise in Housing Prices Means for Real Estate Agents
As a real estate agent, you can expect to have increases in leads and listings in the coming year. As wel all know, seasonal patterns in the housing market suggest that home prices will rise every midyear and fall slightly every fall and winter. Last year, however, proved an exception to the rule as housing prices continued to rise through the winter, marking a yearly price increase of over 5 percent in some cities.
The rise in home prices is, in large part, due to a better balance in demand and supply conditions in the housing market. After years of excess supply and decline in prices, homes are now much more affordable. The median sale price in 2012, for example, was $176,600. These affordable prices helped agents throughout the industry close 4.65 million home sales, up 9 percent from 2011.
Gradual improvements in the economy have aided the recovery of the housing market and real estate industry. The unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in recent years at 7.8 percent. Jobs, 157,000 in January, have been steadily added to the labor market. There have also been improvements in credit quality and declines in foreclosure activity, resulting in banks easing standards on loans.
More households are encouraged to buy, as opposed to rent, as banks ease restrictions on acquiring loans and mortgages. Potential buyers who have been saving and waiting for the market to reach its lowest point are also now searching for new properties. Additionally, current homeowners who have been waiting for the market to rebound to sell their homes are beginning to do so.
With a rapidly growing market, the Boston Logic Sequoia Platform will be a particularly useful tool for you and your real estate company. The Sequoia system integrates CRM, content management, IDX property search, interactive user tools, real estate lead management, deal tracking, and blogging to attract and maintain buyer and seller leads. The cutting edge technology will help you take advantage of the growing market efficiently and effectively.
References:
"Housing to Finally Be Driver of Economic Growth in '13." CNNMoney. N.p., 27 Jan. 2013.
"Fed Says Banks Forecast Improved Lending Outlook for 2013." Bloomberg. N.p., 04 Feb. 2013.
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Posted on February 5, 2013 Filed Under Boston Logic News, Real Estate Websites | Leave a Comment
Best Real Estate Agency In NC – Boston Logic Client
This month, one of Boston Logic's Sequoia customers, Dickens Mitchener & Associates, won the award for Best Real Estate Agency in North Carolina from the International Property Awards 2012 for businesses from Americas.
Criteria for the awards include; marketing and company branding. The awards ceremony was held in London on December 7th.
The International Property Awards are open to real estate professionals from around the world, including; Africa, Asia Pacific, Arabia, Canada, Caribbean, Central & South America, Europe, UK and USA.
Congratulations to Boston Logic customer, Dickens Mitchener & Associates, for winning the Best Real Estate Agency award!
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Posted on December 18, 2012 Filed Under Boston Logic News | Leave a Comment
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