It’s that time of year again. It’s getting dark earlier, Walgreen’s already has Christmas decorations set up in the store and its not even Halloween yet. Other signs of “the end of the year” are everywhere. People are planning Thanksgiving trips, holiday parties and shopping lists are being created. It’s the time of year when most real estate agents put things on “cruise control”, relax for the rest of the year with the false hope that “next year will be my year.” Those crazy thoughts creep into our minds, “after the holidays I’ll get focused again”. After the election “things will settle down.” When the stock market recovers “more people will be interested in buying real estate.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Real estate in your market area is affected by influences outside of your own region. For example, when I sold real estate in Portland, Oregon, what was happening in terms of inventory, appreciation, and activity in Seattle, Washington had an effect on my own marketplace. The two metropolitan areas are less than 200 miles apart, and one influences the other due to the easy and frequent population movement between the two cities.

It’s been fascinating to witness developments in the home staging industry over the past few years. For my first few years as a staging instructor I had to define and explain staging. Nowadays it is a phenomenon that has changed the way real estate is sold. In 2004, I ‘Googled’ home staging, there were 16,768 entries. (I wrote it down) Today, Google home staging and you’ll see 4,770,000 entries.

For years we professed that kitchens and bathrooms were without a doubt the most important areas of a home. We termed them the ‘deal makers and deal breakers’ of Real Estate. Today with the crisis in the economy, we’re seeing a surplus of inventory like never before.

Bringing a person from being a lead to generating a transaction is becoming increasingly more complicated…or is it? I am looking at this situation from the brokerage point of view and how company generated leads are being handled and what we can do to help generate solid business for our agents from these inquiring consumers.

This is a follow up article to my September 3, 2008 article entitled “It’s That Time Again…” We’ve all heard the song, The 12 Days of Christmas, and of course this article is just a useful play on that. Don’t waste one of the biggest marketing opportunities out there, implement as many of my 12 “Ways” as possible to see the maximum outcome and to get 2009 off to a great start! Here we go…

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.

A time-blocked schedule reserves and protects slotted time segments for pre-planned, pre-determined activities. The objective of time blocking is to increase the amount of time you can invest in direct income-producing efforts.  In more than 20 years as a business owner, I’ve yet to run across a more reliable method for seizing control of time and boosting productivity than time blocking.  Many people have heard of time blocking, but few master its use. The challenge isn’t in creating the schedule; that’s the easy part. The challenge is keeping on the schedule. That’s …

It doesn’t matter what the “experts” say about the market – it’s June, school is out and folks are on the move.  Now is the time to ensure that you haven’t left anything to chance.  It’s the time to embrace the concept of home staging like it’s your best friend … because it is!  
1.         While standing at the entrance of the house you have just listed, take lots of photographs of the garden and exterior and especially the front door.  Download them and have a good hard look at what …

Give me a break!  Can we please try to remember that we are in the business of solicitation????  Why do some agents have so much trouble when others try to solicit them via legitimate email?  I guess one man’s “junk” is another man’s treasure.

People are sending the stupid “contract” response emails, like the one below, to senders who are legitimately marketing to them from a list THE RECIPIENT subscribed to…..  Please, remember what we do for a living.  In my mind, sifting through promotional emails is no different than shuffling through my snail mail.  A mailbox is a mailbox is a mailbox. 

When I read things like this, I keep an eye on these areas for great oppertunties to purchase  income properties. I was always told when life gives you lemons make Lemon-Aid  
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Five Cities With Biggest Decline in Home Values
by AnnaMaria Andriotis
May 16th, 2008

With home values continuing to plummet across the country, it’s become clear that the real estate meltdown is far from over.
Values for single-family homes in 14 major U.S. cities posted double-digit declines from their respective peaks, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which tracks prices of single-family homes. On a …