Keep Safety in the Foreground During Showings

Keep Safety in the Foreground During Showings
Andrew Wooten, a crime-prevention expert based in Jacksonville, Fla., offered some safety tips for home sellers during a recent webinar sponsored by the National Association of REALTORS®.

He noted that while real estate professionals generally "do a good job" of relaying potential risks to their clients, "safety often takes a back seat" when the sales professionals are hurrying to prepare for a showing.

Wooten said people should always trust their instincts and be careful if they become suspicious of someone touring their home. They should not allow strangers to enter their home without an appointment, especially if they are alone. They should ask for a visitor's driver's license, address, phone number, and license plate number; take down a physical description; and provide the information via phone to someone as an extra safeguard.

Unknown agents should be told to enter using the lockbox, and all the lights should be turned on and the shades and curtains opened during a showing. Among other things, sellers should remove valuables from the home, allow prospects to enter a room first, refuse to answer any unusual and unnecessary questions, and plan an escape route just in case.


Ernesto Vega P.A., GRI, CIPS
Broker President
Realty World South Florida
Office (954) 880-2553
Fax (954)602-9525
Direct (954) 646-5677
Email evega@RWSF.com
Web www.RWSF.com
Governor Broward Chapter MiamiRE
Director, Realtor Association Of Miami Dade County 2007-2010
F.A.R Honor Society Member
Master Broker Forum, Member
REO BOSS Certified

Existing home sales in Fla. jump 36

Existing home sales in Fla. jump 36 percentThe Associated Press

Posted: 12:20 p.m. Thursday, April 21, 2011


Existing home sales continue to rise in Florida.

Figures from the Florida Realtors and the National Association of Realtors show that sales of homes and condos increased 36 percent from February to March. The national rise was 3.7 percent.

Compared to March 2010, sales in Florida were up 15.8 percent. Median home sales are still lower than they were a year before, though the prices were higher than in February.

Overall, 17 regions in Florida saw an increase in sales. It was also the fourth consecutive month that existing home sales have been higher than they were a year before.

University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith said the sales jump is an indicator of a stronger economy.

___

Information from: St. Petersburg Times, http://tampabay.com

___

April 21, 2011 12:20 PM EDT

Copyright 2011, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Reaching Tomorrow’s Customer Today

Reaching Tomorrow’s Customer Today


Well, nothing has changed…really. Prospecting in the real estate business has always been about reaching tomorrow’s customer today.

While the average term of homeownership is five to eight years, it is easy to see that you are constantly searching for tomorrow’s customer. You more than likely met today’s customer yesterday and have been building that relationship over time.

Some things have obviously changed. We have the Internet, e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging, iPods, iPads and iPhones. The rate of technology adoption is accelerating and it is in large part generational.

If you plan to be in the real estate business in the future, tomorrow’s buyers and sellers must be part of the vision of your business and your career. You need to begin prospecting now.

Who and where are the buyers and sellers of the future? How can you meet them today to get a jump on your competition? Is your competition already working to gain the competitive edge in the future?

Tomorrow’s buyers and sellers are known as the “Net Generation,” those born between 1975 and 1996. They can’t remember a time when there was no Internet. They are also the generation that will inherit the accumulated wealth of their parents and grandparents in unprecedented amounts.

Where are they and how can you meet them? They’re active on social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and others. They can also be found in “Virtual Worlds,” which we’ll discuss in next month’s article.

Saul Klein is senior vice president, Point2, author of MLS 5.0 – The MLS of the Future Whitepaper, a licensed real estate broker in California for the past 32 years and 1993 President of the San Diego Association of REALTORS®.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com [1].

Posted By beth On April 20, 2011 @ 10:16 pm In Best Practices,Business Development,Real Estate,Real Estate Consultants,Real Estate Information,Real Estate News,Real Estate Trends,REALTOR Marketing,Today's Marketplace | Comments Disabled

RISMEDIA, April 21, 2011—Finding new clients and prospecting is the lifeblood of the real estate industry. How have social networking and Web 2.0 affected the business?

Existing Home Sales Rise More Than Expected in March

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in March, a trade group said on Wednesday, suggesting the housing market's downward trend may be close to hitting a bottom.

The National Association of Realtors said sales rose 3.7 percent month over month to an annual rate of 5.10 million units after an upwardly revised 4.92 million unit pace in February.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected sales to rise 2.5 percent to a 5.0 million-unit pace from the previously reported 4.88 million unit rate. Sales have now risen in six of the past eight months.

"It's slow, steady progress, but you cannot not be disturbed by the slow pace of recovery," said Pierre Ellis, an economist at Decision Economics in New York. "Demand is rising even with higher mortgage rates so that's encouraging."

The housing market is struggling to find its footing as a wave of foreclosed properties keeps supply elevated and prices depressed.

Last month, foreclosures and short sales, which typically occur at about 20 percent below market value, accounted for 40 percent of transactions. That was the highest since April 2009 and was up from 39 percent in February.

The median home price fell 5.9 percent in March from a year earlier to $159,600. Compared with March last year, sales were down 6.3 percent.

"A sustained turnaround in the housing market is still far off based on earlier-released depressed readings for housing starts, building permits and builders' confidence indices," said Krishen Rangasamy an economist at CIBC World Markets in Toronto.

Theme-Driven Marketing " Stand Out "

Ok so some of you will think that this are corky ideas , but how do you plan to stand out from all the other realtors let's work on your marketing calendar for the whole year. You see, nearly an event/holiday/celebration/milestone is an excuse for a promotion. And if you're not doing that you're missing the boat. So let's fix that...


First things first is I suggest getting a quick calendar together of what kind of promotions you'd like to run throughout the year. This doesn't need to be anything fancy - but take a look at holidays and "milestone" events throughout the year.


Here are just a few ideas:

Jan: New Year's - Ideas:
- "New Years - New You/New Start"
- "Get rid of Last year's inventory"


Feb: Valentine's Day - Ideas:
- "Give yourself the ____ you'll love"
- "We love you and want to do something special for you"


March: St. Patrick's Day - Idea:
- "Make Your Friends Green With Envy with ______"
- "Your lucky day"


April: April Fools Day - Idea:
- "These discounts are so low my accountant thought this was an April's fools day joke"


May: Mother's Day - Idea:
- "Mother always said you should _________"


April: Tax Day - Idea:
"I need your help to pay for my taxes" (Don't laugh this was a true promotion my friend, Jeff Walker, used very
successfully!)


June: Father's Day/Graduation - Idea:
- "Graduate to a new _____"


July: 4th of July - Ideas:
- "Watch Fireworks explode when you ______"
- "Celebrate your independence from _________"


October: Halloween - Idea:
- "Give yourself a treat this month" (Side note: Halloween is a HUGE holiday and one of the best ones to run a
promotion for.)


November: Election Day - Idea:
-"Elect a new _____"


November: Thanksgiving - Idea:
- "Thank you to our best customers"


Dec: Holidays - Idea:
- "Happy holidays - winter sale"
- "Ho ho ho - Can't beat the fat man so we're having a sale"


But even better than these regular holidays are creating "anytime" promotions. As Dan Kennedy says the #1 sin in marketing is being boring. Online it's harder than ever to try and breakthrough the clutter.


And one way to do this is to take an event and really make it fun and entertaining for your customers/prospects.


The "Any-Reason-Is-Good-Reason-For-a-Sale" Sale


Using reason-why copy (like I just mentioned) is the perfect way to create an event for yourself anytime things are slow, you've hit a milestone in your business (or personal life) or because you need to get rid of inventory, etc. There are tons of ways of doing this that I've seen successfully applied.


A couple off the top of my head are:


"Scratch & Dent" sale...
"Fire/Flood sale"...
"Need to pay my taxes sales"...
"Birthday or Anniversary sale"...
"My server crashed" sale...
"It's raining out"...
(I'm serious there's a local Taco place I love that will send out an email anytime it rains, since their foot traffic goes down, offering free chips and
queso. Smart!)
"Boss is away sale", etc. etc...


I've very successfully done a "scratch and dent" sale just like Robert Collier mentioned in his "Robert Collier Letter Book" - but then last year I decided to do something a little different since others were going a 'scratch & dent' sale too. It was the "Save Yanik's Marriage Sale" with the whole premise being Missy, my wife, was really annoyed at me for the basement being so overloaded with boxes. Truthfully, she WAS really mad and made a big stink about it - but I embellished the story a bit.


After that sale did its job Missy really got into the excitement of clearing out the basement and she suggested another sale for our Wedding anniversary (Sept 16th). This one only did about ¼ of the results from the previous one but it was money created out of thin air. I think it was just too soon for another sale so closely on the heels of the previous one. The scratch & dent sale is a pretty simple model to use and if you incorporate a real reason why it'll work today just like it did 50+ years ago for Robert Collier (and before that).


Another sale I've had a lot of success with is a milestone type sale.


I just did one when my first child, Zak, being born. That promotion nearly tripled my expectations for what it would bring in (it made $4.60+ for every visitor who came). And more importantly people connected with me as a real person - you should have seen the dozens and dozens of congratulations notes. It was really cool.


There are a couple big points I really want to make sure you get from this:


#1 - Make your marketing fun and have people wonder what is this guy/gal up to next? Fact is, most of your prospects and customers probably lead fairly normal and mundane lives. If you can give them something to get excited about or even live a little bit through what you do - you'll have 'hooked' them in.


#2 - This is critical! Don't make your theme or "fun" idea take away from the sales message. Big advertisers do this all the time and waste all their money. They try to use humor or something clever in their advertising but have no salesmanship. The fun or theme aspect of your promotion cannot stand on its own without the fundamentals of direct response (i.e. compelling offer, deadline, headlines, benefits, etc). Bottom line - don't confuse this with being cute or clever and not actually selling. There is a big, BIG difference.


#3 - "Reason Why" copy works perfectly for most of the events or themes you create. As you know most retailers will use some sort of event (i.e. Presidents Day) for a sale. Well that's a pretty weak reason why but most people will accept just about any excuse for a special deal. However, when you combine it with real meaningful reason why copy it works even better even if the reason is a bit contrived. Telling people the reason why you are doing something is one of the most powerful influencers of human behavior.


I hope this gives you some ammo to start thinking up your own promotions for the year and breaking out of the 'ho-hum' mold of other marketers.

5 ‘most innovative’ mobile apps

SEATTLE – April 19, 2011 – PC World recently released its top picks for most innovative apps for 2011 – mobile apps for tablets and smartphones that have the potential of making your life easier.

Here are five free apps that made the list for iPhone or Android:

1. Fring: An upcoming version of this app will offer free video group calls with up to four people at once. (A beta is currently available.)
Platform: Apple’s iOS, Android
Price: Free

2. UpSoundDown: You can put your phone on speakerphone mode automatically by just laying your phone down on a table or turning the phone upside down like you’re using it as a microphone. When you pick the phone back up, you’ll be able to use the handset again.
Platform: Android
Price: Free

3. Zite: This app learns what you like to read and then scans your Facebook and Twitter feeds for news based on your reading habits. It then populates a virtual magazine with content that is tailored to your reading habits.
Platform: Apple iOS
Price: Free

4. Adobe Photoshop Express: You can manipulate photos using this app’s simple features on your iPhone or iPad and then store your photos on the Internet to access from anywhere. Coming soon: Photoshop for iPad, which works like a desktop version of the Photoshop software, which includes layers and effect features (price to be determined for iPad version).
Platform: Apple iOS
Price: Free

5. iSwifter: iPad lovers will appreciate this app, which allows you to watch Flash videos and view Web site animations.
Platform: Apple iOS
Price: Free

Source: “The Top 15 Innovative Mobile Apps in 2011,” InfoWorld (April 2011)

© Copyright 2011 INFORMATION, INC. Bethesda, MD (301) 215-4688

Real Estate: It's time to buy again.

Posted by Marc Rasmussen on Friday, April 1st, 2011 at 10:40am.



I read an interesting article from CNN Money this morning. It talks about the coming shortage of new homes in the United States. I pasted it below. You can read the actual article here - Real Estate: It's time to buy again.

Forget stocks. Don't bet on gold. After four years of plunging home prices, the most attractive asset class in America is housing.


From his wide-rimmed cowboy hat to his roper boots, Mike Castleman fits moviedom's image of the lanky Texas rancher. On a recent March evening, Castleman is feeding cattle biscuits to his two pet longhorn steers, Big Buddy and Little Buddy, on his 460-acre Bar Ten Creek Ranch in Dripping Springs, a hamlet outside Austin in the Texas Hill Country. The spread is a medley of meandering streams, craggy cliffs, and centuries-old oaks. But even in this pastoral setting, his mind keeps returning to a subject he knows as well as any expert around: the housing market. "I'm a dirt-road economist who sees what's happening on the ground, and in 35 years I've never seen a shortage of new construction like the one I'm seeing today," declares Castleman, 70, now offering a biscuit to his miniature donkey Thumper. "The talking heads who are down on real estate will hate to hear this, but America needs to build a lot more houses. And in most markets the price of new homes is fixin' to rise, not fall."

Castleman is in a unique position to know. As the founder and CEO of a company called Metrostudy, he's spent more than three decades tracking real-time data on the country's inventory of new homes. Each quarter he dispatches 500 inspectors to literally drive through 45,000 subdivisions from Baltimore to Sacramento. The inspectors examine 5 million finished lots, one at a time, and record whether they contain a house that's under construction, one that's finished and for sale, or a home that's sold. Metrostudy covers 19 states, or around 65% of the U.S. housing market, including all the ones hardest hit by the crash: Florida, California, Arizona, and Nevada. The company's client list includes virtually every major homebuilder and bank -- from Pulte (PHM) and KB Home (KBH) to Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC).

The key figures that Metrostudy collects, and that those clients prize, are the number of homes that are vacant and for sale in each city, and the number of months it takes to sell all of them. Together those figures measure inventory -- the key metric in determining whether a market has a surplus or a shortage of new housing.



Today Castleman is witnessing an extraordinary reversal of the new-home glut that helped sink prices just a few years ago. In the 41 cities Metrostudy covers, a total of 78,000 houses are now either vacant and for sale, or under construction. That's less than one-fourth of the 343,000 units in those two categories at the peak of the frenzy in mid-2006, and well below the level of a decade ago. "If we had anything like normal levels of buying, those houses would sell in 2½ months," says Castleman. "We'd see an incredible shortage. And that's where we're heading."

If all the noise you're hearing about housing has you totally confused, join the crowd. One day you'll read that owning a home has never been more affordable. The next day you'll see news that housing starts have plunged to nearly their lowest level in half a century, as headlines announced in March. After four years of falling prices and surging foreclosures, it's hard to know what to think. Even Robert Shiller and Karl Case can't agree. The two economists, who together created the widely followed S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price indices, are right now offering sharply contrasting views of housing's future. Shiller recently warned that the chances were high for a further double-digit drop in U.S. home prices. But in an interview with Fortune, Case took a far brighter view: "The lack of new home building is a huge help that a lot of people are ignoring," says Case. "People think I'm crazy to be optimistic, but housing is looking like the little engine that could."

To see where real estate is truly headed, it's critical to keep your eye firmly on the fundamentals that, over time, always determine the course of prices and construction. During the last decade's historic run-up in prices, Fortune repeatedly warned that things were moving too fast. In a cover story titled "Is the Housing Boom Over?," this writer's analysis found that the basic forces that govern the market -- the cost of owning vs. renting and the level of new construction -- were in bubble territory. Eventually reality set in, and prices plummeted. Our current view focuses on those same fundamentals -- only now they're pointing in the opposite direction.

So let's state it simply and forcibly: Housing is back.

Two basic factors are laying the foundation for dramatic recovery in residential real estate. The first is the historic drop in new construction that so amazes Castleman. The second is a steep decline in prices, on the order of 30% nationwide since 2006, and as much as 55% in the hardest-hit markets. The story of this downturn has been an astonishing flight from the traditional American approach of buying new houses to an embrace of renting. But the new affordability will gradually lure Americans back to buying homes. And the return of the homeowner will start raising prices in many markets this year.

Of course, home prices are low and home construction is weak for a reason: incredibly low demand. For our scenario to play out, America will need a decent economy, with job creation and consumer confidence continuing to claw their way back to normal.

One big fear is that today's tight credit standards will chill the market. But we're really returning to the standards that prevailed before the craze, and those requirements didn't stop prices and homebuilding from rising in a good economy. "The credit standards are now at about historical levels, excluding the bubble period," says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. "We saw prices rising with fundamentals in those periods, and it will happen again."

To see why, let's examine the remarkable shift in home affordability. A new study by Deutsche Bank measures affordability in two ways: first, the share of income Americans are paying to own a home. And second, the cost of owning vs. renting. On the first metric, the analysis finds that homeowners now pay just 9.8% of their income in after-tax mortgage, tax, and insurance payments. That's down from 17.2% at the bubble's peak in 2007, and by far the lowest number in the Deutsche Bank database, going back to 1999. The second measure, the cost of owning compared with renting, should also inspire potential buyers. In 28 out of 54 major markets, it's now cheaper to pay a mortgage and other major costs than to rent the same house. What's most compelling is that in all of the distressed markets, owning now wins by a wide margin -- a stunning reversal from four years ago. It now costs 34% less than renting in Atlanta. In Miami the average rent is now $1,031 a month, vs. the $856 it costs to carry a ranch house or stucco cottage as an owner. (For more, see The top 10 cities for home buyers)

Not all markets will bounce back equally, of course. Housing resembles the weather: The exact conditions are different in every city. But in general the big U.S. markets fall into two different climate zones right now. We'll call them the "nondistressed markets" and the "foreclosure markets." A more detailed look shows why the forecast for both is favorable.

Nondistressed markets: Ready for launch

No cities went untouched by the collapse in prices over the past few years. But markets such as Northern Virginia, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, San Diego, the San Francisco suburbs, and virtually all of Texas held up reasonably well. In those areas prices spiked far less than in bubble cities -- the foreclosure markets we'll get to shortly -- chiefly because they didn't get nearly as many speculators who thought they could flip the homes or rent them to snowbirds.

The nondistressed markets will be able to get prices rising and construction growing far faster than the harder-hit areas for a simple reason: Although some of these markets are still suffering from foreclosures, they don't need to work through the big overhang haunting a Las Vegas or a Phoenix. The number of new homes for sale or in the pipeline is extraordinarily low in nondistressed markets. San Diego is typical. It has just 921 freestanding homes for sale or under construction, compared with 4,425 in late 2005. The challenge for these cities is to generate enough demand to reduce inventories of existing, or resale, homes. In the entire country the resale supply stands at 3.5 million houses and condos. That's a fairly high number, since it would take more than eight months to sell those properties; seven months or below is the threshold for a strong market.

But in the nondistressed cities, the existing home inventory is lower, closer to seven months on average. So a modest increase in demand will translate into strong gains in both prices and new construction. That should happen quickly, because most of those markets -- including Silicon Valley, Northern Virginia, and Texas -- are now showing good job growth.

Zandi of Moody's Analytics expects that prices will rise three to four points faster than inflation for the next few years in virtually all of the nondistressed markets. His view is that prices will increase in line with rents, which are now growing briskly because apartments are in short supply. Those higher rents will encourage buyers to cross the street from an apartment to a home of their own.

In Northern Virginia, Chris Bratz, an engineer, and his wife, Amy DiElsi, a publicist, are planning to leave their rental apartment and become homeowners for the first time. The main reason? Buying has simply become a far better deal than renting. "The market got completely inflated, then it crashed, so prices are coming back to where they should be," says Chris. As the couple have watched prices fall, they have also watched the rent on their apartment spiral upward, reaching $2,700 a month. They calculate that they should be able to purchase a townhouse for between $400,000 and $500,000 and pay less per month for a mortgage.

The nondistressed markets will also lead the way in construction. Zandi predicts that for the nation as a whole, single-family housing "starts" -- measured when a builder pours a foundation for a new home -- will rise from 470,000 in 2010 to as much as 700,000 this year. A large portion of that activity will happen in nondistressed markets where a tightening supply of resale houses will start making new homes look like a good deal. "Our main competition is from resales," says Jeff Mezger, CEO of KB Home. "The prices of those homes have stayed so low, because of low demand, that it's hampered the ability of builders to sell new houses."

But many would-be buyers simply prefer a brand-new house. Eventually they'll move from renters to buyers, and the trend will accelerate now that prices are no longer dropping. In Minneapolis, Yuan Qu and her husband, Xiang Chen, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, just moved from a two-bedroom rental to a new light-blue four-bedroom ranch with a chocolate-colored roof on a spacious corner lot. They paid $400,000, a bargain price compared with a few years ago. The couple, both in their early thirties, moved to Minnesota from China six years ago. "We wanted to buy a house, and we've been waiting and waiting and waiting," says Qu. "The prices went down for so long, we finally thought they couldn't keep falling." For Qu the only choice was new construction. "We're not very handy people," she admits.

Foreclosure markets: The outlook is brightening

The true disaster areas for housing since the bubble burst have been Sunbelt cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Miami -- places that boasted great job and population growth in the mid-2000s, only to suffer a housing crash that swamped them with empty homes and condos and crushed their economies. But people always want to live in those sunny locales, and their job markets are starting to recover, albeit slowly. In foreclosure markets the inventory problem is far greater because it includes not just traditional resale homes but millions of distressed properties. Fortunately those houses are now such a screaming deal that investors, including lots of mom-and-pop buyers, are purchasing them at a rapid pace. To be sure, some foreclosure markets won't rebound for years because they're both vastly overbuilt and far from big job centers; a prime example is California's Inland Empire, a real estate disaster zone 80 miles east of Los Angeles.

But the outlook is brightening for Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami, and parts of Northern California. A big positive is the tiny supply of new homes entering the market. Phoenix, for example, has a total of just 8,100 new homes that are either for sale or under construction, down from 53,000 in mid-2006. The big test in these cities is absorbing the steady stream of distressed properties. The foreclosures put downward pressure on the market far out of proportion to their numbers because of markdown pricing. "We had levels of inventory even higher than this in 1990 and 1991," says MIT economist William Wheaton. "But they were traditional listings, not foreclosures, so they didn't create the big discounts you get with foreclosures."

Wheaton reckons that we'll see a flow of around 1 million foreclosures a year, at a fairly even pace, from now through 2013. That figure is frequently cited as evidence that the market is doomed for years in most foreclosure markets. Not so. The reason is that the vast bulk of those units, probably over 600,000, according to Gleb Nechayev, an economist with real estate firm CB Richard Ellis (CBG), are being converted to rentals either by investors or their current owners. Those properties are finding plenty of renters, since the rental market is still extremely strong across the country. Remember, the millions who lost their homes to foreclosure still need somewhere to live.

A typical investor is Alex Barbalat, a Russian immigrant who's purchased seven homes east of San Francisco in the towns of Bay Point, Antioch, and Pittsburg. His average purchase price is around $100,000 for homes that once sold for between $300,000 and $500,000. But he has no trouble finding renters, since his tenants can commute to jobs in San Francisco on the BART transit system. Barbalat is pocketing rental yields on the prices he paid of around 12%, and he's in no hurry to sell. "I'm holding them until prices drastically rise," he says.

Investment funds are also entering the game. Dotan Y. Melech looks for bargains in Las Vegas for UnitedAMS, a firm he co-founded that manages apartments and other real estate investments. The firm has raised more than $20 million from outside investors to purchase distressed properties. So far, Melech has bought around 300 houses and plans to purchase another 200 this year. He has no trouble renting the houses he buys, since, he estimates, occupancy rates in Las Vegas are touching 95%. The "cap rate," or return on investment after all expenses, is between 8% and 10% -- twice the rate on 10-year Treasuries. Melech rents to people who lost their homes but are reliable renters. "A lot of people can't be buyers because their credit got hurt," he says.

Even with investors jumping in, buying activity in foreclosure markets hasn't yet increased enough to bring inventories down. It will soon. Zandi thinks prices will fall a couple of percentage points lower in the distressed markets in the short run. "But that will be overshooting," he says. "It's like an elastic band. If prices do drop this year, they will need to bounce back because they'll be far too low compared with rents and replacement cost." Renters will come off the sidelines to purchase homes in the years ahead, precisely the opposite trend of the past few years.

Consider the example of Michael Dynda, a retired Air Force avionics technician who now works for a government contractor in Las Vegas. Dynda, 49, is a first-time buyer who put off purchasing for years, in part because prices were falling so rapidly in Las Vegas, with no bottom in sight. But last year the combination of bargain prices and low mortgage rates became too good to resist. He ended up purchasing a 2,300-square-foot stucco home for $240,000, or about half what it would have fetched in 2007. Dynda got a 4.38% home loan, and pays the same amount on his mortgage as on the rent on the house he left to become a homeowner. "The timing was about as good as it could get," says Dynda.



Mike Castleman's company tracks the inventory of new homes in 19 states
across the country. He sees supply getting tight. "Home prices are
fixin' to rise," he says.



Back on the ranch, Mike Castleman is lounging in his creek-front mansion, built from "a hundred tons of fine central Texas limestone." As he shows off his collection of custom-made guitars, including one crafted to resemble the skin of a rattlesnake, the homespun housing guru once again returns to his favorite topic.

Castleman claims that this recovery will look like all the others: It will bring a severe shortage of housing. He invokes the livestock business to explain. "It takes three years between the time a bull mates with a cow and when you get a calf ready for market," he says. "That's how it is in housing too. We'll get a big surge in demand and the drywall companies will take a long time to ramp up, and it will take years to get new lots approved. Buyers will show up looking for a house in a subdivision, and all the houses will be sold. The builders will tell them it will take six months to deliver a house." But those folks, says Castleman, will be set on buying a place. "And they'll want it so bad they'll bid the prices up!" In other words: Beat the crowd.

It's a Great Time to Buy a House
Mike Castleman, the Texan with the best realtime view of housing in the U.S., tells editor-atlarge Shawn Tully that the naysayers are about to get a big surprise: rising prices for new homes.

Grow Your Referral Business with Exceptional Customer Service

Grow Your Referral Business with Exceptional Customer Service

Posted By susanne On April 5, 2011 @ 3:24 pm In Best Practices,Business Development,Real Estate,Real Estate Consultants,Real Estate Information,Real Estate News,Real Estate Trends,REALTOR Marketing,Today's Marketplace | Comments Disabled

RISMEDIA, April 6, 2011—While growing your real estate business may be a daunting task in today’s real estate market, it is important that real estate professionals take advantage of referrals that come from past clients. Here, Lisa Monti, director of REALTOR® Sales, Stewart Title Company discusses how exceptional customer service can help grow your referral business.

In today’s economic climate, growing your business can be a daunting task. Leads and listings are not just falling onto your doorstep as in the good ol’ days. So how can you be a top performer? Let’s first start by looking at your latest successes. How did you generate your last listing?

According to the 2010 National Association of REALTORS® Member Profile, a median of 20% of all NAR members’ business is referrals from past clients.

To further support this, the National Association of REALTORS® Home Buyer and Seller Survey reports that 64% of sellers chose their agent based on a referral or had used the same agent in the past. Reputation was the most important factor in choosing an agent, cited by 35% of respondents, followed by trustworthiness at 23%. Eighty-four percent of sellers are likely to use the same agent again or recommend them to others. Buyers also most commonly choose an agent based on a referral from a friend, neighbor or relative, with trustworthiness and reputation being the most important factors.

Given this, building a strategy to grow your referral business seems crucial.

Provide exceptional customer service in your client’s transaction
Real estate brokers and professionals across the country are using technology tools to offer a new level of service. Whether they help agents manage their transactions or give home buyers and sellers the ability to view their transaction via email or mobile device, these tools can help you stay in the forefront of your client’s mind.

Another way to get people talking about their experience with their home purchase or sale is to master the closing. As you know, you want to avoid any possible surprises at the closing table, and the key to this is transparency. Always keep that line of communication open with your clients. Provide access to their real estate documents and status to notify your clients of any issues and pending activities that must occur to keep the transaction on track.

Be your client’s trusted advisor
You know your market like the back of your hand. Share this information with your clients and become their resident expert. You can provide neighborhood data, school information and local retail information, as well as educate your home buyers and sellers about the real estate process and what to expect throughout the transaction.

Extend your services beyond the closing
Another great way to better serve your clients is to offer new services centered around their home and move. Try partnering with a provider to handle basic utility hook-ups, provide quotes for home services, or assist with shopping for home appliances and insurance services for your clients. Stewart Title offers these services to our customers via our Stewart Concierge™ call center with great success.

These simple customer service tips will help your clients feel secure in their decision to make you their real estate professional. And in your business, great service is the key to getting more referrals. Having a plan to provide the best service in your area is the key to your referral success.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com [2].

Have you heard about RISMedia’s Real Estate Information Network® (RREIN)? RREIN is an elite network of leading real estate companies dedicated to providing consumers and their agents with leading real estate information, and committed to the belief that Information Share Equals Market Share. Having only launched this past June 2010, the RREIN network is already comprised of 40 leading brokerages, which make up 575 offices, 30,000 agents, 167,000 closings and represents over $41 billion in transactions. How can RREIN help your recruiting efforts and differentiate your company today? For more information, email rrein@rismedia.com [3].

Copyright© 2011 RISMedia, The Leader in Real Estate Information Systems and Real Estate News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be republished without permission from RISMedia.

Lisa Monti
Director of REALTOR® Sales,
Eastern Operations
Stewart Title Company
www.stewart.com