Hi All, I thought a positive message going into the holidays was needed. May everyone take time to recharge and plan and execute towards a successful 2009 season. Austin Smith is an active blogger on our team and I loved his most recent post and felt inclined to syndicate it here - Happy Holidays!
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By Austin Smith, Product Specialist - Goomzee.com more...
Keeping it real-and being grateful for my friends and associates at Inman:
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To redeem, use promo code 'PC955689' Ends Nov. 30th, 2008.
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Thanks to all for your thoughts and comments-(;-])
...Blog ON!
Steve
Obeoman
Real estate professionals need to think differently about the future. They need to do more and they need to move faster. It has now been more than 10 years since my first book on trends, Real Estate confronts Reality, and many of the changes that we have been writing and speaking about are now coming to fruition. Things are definitely changing, and on a large scale. Within the next five years the real estate brokerage industry will significantly have changed and brokers and agents that don’t adapt now will not enjoy the benefits of the next economic upswing. more...
Change seems to be the buzz word this year, with Barack Obama touting “Change We Need,” John McCain promoting “Real Change” and even Hillary Clinton saying “Change you can count on.”
Every year the Swanepoel TRENDS Report identifies, analyzes and then details out the imminent changes that are expected to impact the real estate industry over the coming 12 – 18 months. The 2009 Report is currently in the final 60 days of research and writing and obviously with all the recent financial disasters, the energy crisis, the housing collapse and foreclosure catastrophe this has made 2008 the worst year in real estate and financial history. more...
Hi Folks
Buying a property is simple, as long as you do follow a checklist. It is really difficult to spend time in researching property overseas, but if someone found the property exhibition in a desired region would help them a lot in relation to meet the developers and real estate agents, and get first hand knowledge of about their properties and locations. more...
You know it just hit me, I'm looking forward to 2009!!! We are three years into this pain in the stomach / pocket detour and I have survived. Now that doesn't mean I have sold much yet it does mean I haven't lost my thrill for walking in that stranger's house and trying to figure out whether it can be the home my few and frightened active clients might choose. more...
How, in this market, do you effectively market yourself as a Buyers Agent or Broker to potential buyers and how do you educate the often paranoid listing agent and seller as to your value?
Hi Folks
Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Rera) is cracking down on speculators at the Cityscape
Exhibition. According to Rera top official no memorandums of understandings, sale agreements or property contracts will be legally acceptable if they are not registered with the Dubai Land Department (DLD). Even real estate developers who are not registered with Rera or any of the unregistered projects would not permit to sell their properties. more...
Despite congressional passage of the historic $700 billion bailout legislation, which was signed by President Bush on Saturday, Oct. 4, the Dow Jones Index tumbled 22% last week; the worst week in its 118 year history.
Some calculations indicate that since the beginning of the year U.S. corporations have declined about $8 trillion in value ($20 trillion to $12 trillion) and we have seen giants stumble and fade like Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Indy Mac Bank, Lehman Brothers, AIG Insurance and Wachovia. more...
As real estate professionals, nationwide, search for sales and marketing tools to better advertise their listings to consumers, talk of mobile advertising capabilities continues to rise to the top of discussion.
We've seen MLS and Associations swarming around the idea of mobile MLS search, in attempt to meet real estate consumer demands and provide easy access to listing information from mobile phones. The only question is, are we ready to start marketing campaigns via mobile web search? If you are trying to reach a large audience, wireless user reports point to "No". more...
Nine months ago when the 2008 edition of the Swanepoel Trends Report was published, the demographics that included women, youth and minorities were identified as key drivers in the future of the residential real estate brokerage industry. In the Trend titled “Shattered Glass” it was detailed how many women had reached leadership positions at national levels.
My subsequent blog on ActiveRain lit the match to initiate a nationwide flame in search of the Top 100 Most Influential Women in leadership roles in the Real Estate Industry. more...
What started as Trend #10 in my annual Swanepoel TRENDS Report 2008 nine months ago, has evolved into one of the best example of how viral a story can become on the Internet.
Originally titled “Shattered Glass” in his Trends Report, I discussed how the impact of Women, the Youth and Minorities were shaping the real estate brokerage industry. In the section about women I listed numerous examples of high-powered women that have moved into the #1 or #2 positions at many of the country’s largest real estate companies. more...
Coming soon to a cell phone near you: The ability to project images and videos via a built in micro sized pico-projector on any surface up to 100 inches. more...
The Financial Market Disaster of 2008
September 2008 is exactly two weeks old today, but what a September it has already been. The events of late are unsurpassed in living history and I think that 9/08 may very well be remembered as the worst financial disaster in history. more...
Today we remember the brave men, women and children who lost their lives seven years ago and the heroes that responded to the emergency. There are many different video tributes of that day but I thought that this one was particularly well rounded. http://attacked911.tripod.com/
God Bless America!
Over the weekend the Bush Government seized the housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the largest mortgage bailout in global history. These two companies have lost some $14 Billion over the past year and according to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, "the intervention was necessary" to save the US economy.
With this bail out the Treasury acquired $1 billion in preferred shares in each company while pledging up to another $200 billion. At the same time both Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron will be replaced and both companies will be under the conservatorship and management control of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. more...
Over and above the obvious, what will make cell phone or a PDA indispensible?
• Maybe to manage their contacts, or
• To receive and send emails, or
• Text message, maybe
• To download music or
• To take photos
There is no argument that cell phones have clearly changed the world – in more ways than one. They started by removing the need for street corner pay phones, then raised being “in-touch” to a whole new level. The added feature sets noted above have changed the devices into multi-facetted tools or maybe toys.
But what feature will actually completely revolutionize the phone? more...
If you are not familiar with Local.com, they are localized online search tool specializing in helping people find large and small businesses within their local area. Unlike other local search tools out there Local.com contains rich review content submitted by actual customers as well as free listings within their directory.
According to Compete, Local.com’s traffic has been steadily increasing over the past few years as well and they are now just under the 10 million visitor per month mark. more...
Hi - This is an article that I recently wrote for an online trade publication that I thought would be relevant here.
Thanks
Mike
Too many marketers live in silos. Their strategy too often fails to address all the ways they could be reaching their target audience. In many cases if they are reaching their audience through the right channels the message is not consistent or integrated properly. more...
Six billion people inhabit the earth; half in cities with 500 million of them driving cars every day. One of the single most important inventions of our lifetime, the vehicle, has created an ever increasingly appetite for oil.
We have built some 50,000 power plants across the globe and collectively these engines and coal burning power plants contribute significantly to global warming by emitting harmful gasses into the atmosphere – some reports estimate as much as 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. The earth's surface is trapping these" greenhouse "gases and the emissions are choking the planet of its natural heat circulation system. more...
The results for the XXIX Real Estate Olympiad are in.
Wow, what a huge undertaking it has been to tally the scores, taking all factors into consideration, weighted scores, removing highest and lowest scores and of course double checking the hanging chads. Thank you to all paticipants, nominees,voters and judges!
So the Medal Winners of the 2008 Real Estate Pacesetter Award, as voted by the Inman Real Estate Trends Group, are: more...
So, I've been author of the Hamptons Real Estate Blog for just under two years now. The blog has been viewed nearly 90,000 times, yet I am not getting as much "business" from the blog as I anticipated. More importantly, I just closed my Remax office and I want to open an Exclusive Buyer Agency in the Hamptons, where I have been listing/selling/managing/brokering for ten years. I'm looking for a model that has successfully used the blog as an income/lead/business generating platform for a Buyers Brokerage in a luxury market. more...
With the market as difficult as it is are you doing everything you can to sell your clients homes? Have you considered home swapping? If not, then why? The service we provide is FREE and easy to use. Just log into www.pad4pad.com, find your listings, claim them, add the exchange information and do a swap search. If your listings are not on our site, request your agency set up a feed to download them for free. Why not?
Greg
This is in follow up to the post last week titled Real Estate Olympics
Recap of Beijing
Mark Spitz's 36-year old record of 7 gold medals at one Olympic event, across all Olympic sports, was shattered when 23-year-old swimming machine Michael Phelps grabbed his 8th gold in Beijing and 14 all-time gold medals. Who will ever forget his 0.01 of a second photo-finish with Serbian - Wow. more...
My husband and I run our own mortgage broker office. We have never aligned ourselves to any particular Real Estate Agent, but marketed directly to homeowners hoping to refinance or move up in life. Because we have had very good success with this, and have always been the people referring TO agents instead of getting referred BY agents, we haven't depended on Agent business.
Now, however, we are being approached by four different agents in our area who want to co-market with us. more...
Curb appeal - it isn't what it used to be. There was a time when a savvy agent could get a buyer to overlook 'flaws' seen from the road. Well in today's online world, curb appeal has taken on a whole new meaning.
When buyers scan listings on REALTOR.com(r) or other real estate websites, if they aren't impressed with the photos in THREE SECONDS, they "bounce" and click onto the next listing. No matter how many print ads, how many brochures, baseball + football schedule refrigerator magnets they mail, the photos are the be all, end all for getting a listing noticed online. more...
With the XXIX Olympiad - The 2008 Summer Olympic Games - officially underway in Beijing China I thought it would be interesting to have a small online real estate olympiad of our own. more...
The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 (the Housing Act) was signed into law last week as the most sweeping housing legislation since the Great Depression. The new Act authorizes the Department of the Treasury to stem the tide of home foreclosures and provide a lifeline to mortgage lenders.
It’s significant as the last legislation addressing a large group of homeowners was the National Housing Act of 1934 that created the Federal Housing Administration and authorized the creation of Fannie Mae. more...
IDENTITY THEFT AND THE STEALING OF CONFIDENTIAL DATA
“Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the nation - especially in the suburbs,” says Congresswoman Melissa Bean. The FTC receives over 250,000 reports of identity theft every year and USA Today reported that in 2007 an estimated 260 million records were stolen - that amounts to 8 records stolen every second of every day.
In real estate this is also a growing concern. Here are three possible vulnerable areas of our industry that I see: more...
The real estate industry is changing. Traditional means of advertising have become less effective as home buyers have transitioned to the Internet as a means of identifying property.
As a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) professional, I can corroborate that the cost of online advertising continues to rise; as does the expectation of buyers in their real estate website experience. more...
When the stock market took a nose dive, real estate brought growth.
When the economy did poorly, real estate introduced wealth.
When 911 all but destroyed our faith, real estate restored the American Dream.
In many occasions, and in many years, real estate has been the rock to depend, or in some cases even the rocket to ride to riches. But times have changed and the bright years of 2000-2005 have become a dull memory. more...
Since starting Pad4pad in February of 2008, we have received many inquiries regarding what exactly home swapping is and how it can be used to sell your home. Below is what we know about home swapping and how you can utilize Pad4pad to help sell your home. more...
I think real estate marketing will never be the same again. During the last decade it has unequivocally changed and is still shaping itself as the indutry is introduce to new technologies. more...
