The last installment was more geared toward brokers and team leaders so I will make this one for agents.  I’ll warn you: This strategy will not make you friends, but it will make you money.  If you are like most agents today, you are struggling for sales opportunities.  You know what to do when you find a new customer, and hopefully, you do a great job.  The problem is finding enough customers.
Here’s a great way to find new customers, and it costs almost nothing.  It works best if you have …

I’m often asked what I think about REO business.  Here’s what I think: It beats no business at all… barely.  Now that I have your attention, let me take a minute to explain why.
First, for the uninitiated, let me explain the term REO.  REO stands for “Real Estate Owned”.  Talk about dumb names!  I am not aware of any real estate that is NOT owned.  Are you?  I digress.  Bad name aside, REO has come to mean real estate that is owned by the lender, after a foreclosure.  Now why …

A day when we are asked to remember
our many blessings.
Freedom…
to think, to love, to live.
Life …
whose most valued treasures
are a special gift.
Happiness …
that doesn’t come from
what we own
but from the love of
family and friends.
Thanksgiving is in…
our gratitude and attitude,
our giving and sharing,
our well being and health,
and above all our trust and belief.
Remember those separated from their families who stand in the gap in harm’s way
to insure that the blessings of Thanksgiving fill your hearts and home!

How to Know the Odds of Selling Any Home…
What if you could actually know the odds of selling a client’s home in 30 days… or 60 days… or 90 days?  Wouldn’t that make advising that client a lot easier?  Well now you can!  And it’s easy.
As a listing agent, one of the questions I was often asked by sellers when I was a listing their home was, “How long do you think it will take to sell my house?”  As a new agent I struggled with this, and I did …

The recent Earth Day gave the green revolution another shot up the arm.  When Earth Day started in 1970 a large number of people (20 million people one country) had already committed to celebrate it. Since then that number has exploded to 500 million (175 countries); about 7% of the world’s population.
But even prior to 2000 “building green” still remained outside mainstream awareness – but has that changed, and for many good reasons. Elevating the profile of “Green” has been added to the agenda of movie celebrities such as Brad …

I am writing to you this week more as a public warning, or a real estate warning message if you will, than my regular message. This is something that all real estate agents and investors must be aware of in today’s marketplace.

We had a large 1031 exchange company that has declared bankruptcy in the last few weeks on the West Coast. Summit Accommodators 1031 Exchange filed bankruptcy before the end of the year with 13.6 million in assets and 27.8 million in liabilities. They are 14.2 million short …

Prospecting is one of the easiest but most misunderstood concepts in the field of sales.   Sales trainers are always trying to sell their “prospecting-free systems” on worldwide speaking circuits by saying, basically, “You will never have to prospect again if you use my system.” And, because salespeople secretly don’t want to prospect, they readily buy into the too-good-to-be-true, no-prospecting philosophy. 
Our readiness to take the easy bait makes us like the wolves that are hunted above the Arctic Circle. The wolf hunter dips a sharp knife in blood and freezes it.  …

Not necessarily, they are very different sites. But the fact is, that in my reading over the weekend, I saw that Craigslist gets more hits than Realtor.com – are all those visitors there to buy real estate? No. But many are. Or they are looking for rentals, or they are potential sellers looking to see what agents are being pro-active in their marketing efforts for when they are ready to sell their home. The bottom line is that’s a lot of traffic and if you’re not taking advantage of it, I don’t see how you can be doing your best for your clients.

It’s amazing to watch the world through the eyes of a child. The exposure we gain is immeasurable. The evaluation skills we can take and the questioning of everything by the child gives pause to our often routine, busy lives.

New real estate wiki for real estate industry is launched. 
History of wikis in real estate
BiggerPockets (launched in 2006) claims to be the first real estate wiki but it unfortunately closed down in May 2007 due to lack of sufficient content.  Introduced shortly therafter, and still going strong, is InmanWiki (part of InmanNews, InmanTV and InmanBlog).  
Origins of wikisWikiWikiWeb was the first site to be called a wiki. It was started by Ward Cunningham in 1994 and was based on the name of the Honolulu International Airport shuttle called “Wiki-Wiki” … in Hawaiian that …