As we look at the state of the economy in 2010 one has to wonder just who’s — if anyone’s — prediction is going prove out in the end. There are those who tout that the recovery is underway but when they supply their supporting data one tends to feel less secure about their pronouncement. However, one thing is common to all reports … whatever the economic growth winds up being it will be well below the long-term U.S. average of 3%.

The Fed has been pouring billions into the credit markets to hold lending rates down with very little impact on the market. The highly touted “stimulus” has resulted in remarkable little stimulus as it becomes clear that it primarily consisted of transfer…

Sitting in a car on a rainy day considering where to go to lunch? Easy answer! Just grab your GPS enabled phone and push a button. Up comes a list of nearby restaurants, which if you desire you can filter by type of food. Find one you like? Tap the screen and up comes not only the directions but all the details along with how others have rated it.

What’s next?

You have to solve the lead problem first.
Allow me to tell you a fishing story. A real estate fairy tale, if you will. Once upon a time there was a huge river, stocked full of home-buyer and home-seller fish. All along the banks of that river were REALTORS® with their fishing poles. Everyone was catching all he wanted, and life was good.
Then one day, way upstream, a big commercial fishing company set up operations, with its computerized fish finders, its power nets, …

One of the coolest and catchiest domains in real estate – cyberhomes.com – has just changed hands … again.

This successful national real estate website providing property data and valuations is in many regards one of the best real estate websites around. Yet somehow it has remained a step child in our industry, floating from one foster home to another. Let’s explore its unique journey and the reasons why, at the age of 15, this time it may be different.

In the Swanepoel TRENDS Report I regularly discuss trends in the printing and publishing world. For example trend #1 in the 2006 Report was titled “Electronic Devices Take Center Stage”, the 2007 Report extensively discussed “Web 2.0” and the in 2008 trend #3 covered “The New Digital Currency.”

My recent blog on ActiveRain titled “Is Print Finally Dead” drew over 150 comments with opinions from both sides of the isle, with the majority predicting the demise of newspapers.

For months, we’ve been wondering if the housing sector was rebounding or whether the good news was a creature of the tax credit. Well,  the jury is still out, but we have a microphone in the jury room and it doesn’t look good. The May numbers were just plain disappointing, and no amount of it-takes-longer-to-close-a-short-sale explaining away will excuse it.
The weak job numbers for May almost guarantee that this recovery will be very slow and very mild. Without jobs, housing cannot come back and while there’s some good news …

Trend #8 in the 2007 edition of the Swanepoel TRENDS Report discussed the likelihood of non-US real estate brokerage companies expanding to the United States. Countries that were identified to lead the charge included Australia, Canada, Germany and South Africa.

This week, Australian-based Harcourts, with over 630 offices and 4,000+ agents in nine countries, became the third major non-US based company to validate this forecast with the announcement of a joint venture with one of California’s large real estate companies, Altera Real Estate.

YouTube is more than just a video-sharing website. In a very short five years it has become a society changing phenomena alongside internet giants such as Google, Amazon, EBay, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Yahoo, Blogger, Facebook and Twitter. With more than two million views every single day, YouTube also boasts being the third largest website in the world behind only Google and Facebook.

Today it is estimated that 24 hours of new videos are uploaded every minute with over 70% of the material coming from outside the United States. YouTube estimates that the average person spends a whopping 15 minutes a day on YouTube.

Last year November, the Realtor® Property Resource (RPR) announcement by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) shook the industry. NAR had just reached an agreement with Lender Processing Services (LPS) and announced their plans on launching the Realtor® Valuation Model (RVM) in hopes that it will become the “gold standard” used by financial in the majority of online valuations.

For a detailed account on Automatic Valuations Models (AVM) and the events that led up to the creation, the structuring, the benefits and the concerns of RPR read the latest edition of …

World’s Largest Real Estate Group

Realogy Corporation, the world’s largest real estate franchise group, last week reported their results through March 31st. The one-liner is that the Q1/10 revenue of $819 million is up 18% over the same period last year.

The growth is principally attributed to the move-up, higher priced markets and a comparatively weak first quarter in 2009. According to Realogy president and CEO Richard A. Smith, the company also saw gains in the average home sale price during the last year.