NAR's annual Member Survey just came out for 2012 giving us lots of data about members and how they did business in 2011.  I went straight to stuff about their Web presence and the business it generates for them, and it was pretty depressing.  Thus this headline....Read Full Post

Home Economics: How to rate a real estate agent - Philly.com. Yet another "rate the agents" site is touting the ability to help consumers to choose the right real estate professional. ...Read Full Post

The NAR Member Profile for 2012 is out, and you can download it here.   There is a lot of information about NAR members, but for this post, just a few website numbers I thought were interesting....Read Full Post

I have written about this before, but it keeps happening so I keep ranting in the hopes that some real estate agents will figure out that some spam avoidance mechanisms are costing them perhaps thousands of dollars every year!  Apparently, someone subscribed to one of my courses, and here's part...

OK, so I wanted a headline to get your attention.  However, I don't believe that open houses do anything to sell the subject homes in 99%+ of cases, and NAR's annual survey pretty much verifies that.  Here's an open house article quoting Realtors who like them, those who do not, and a consumer...

With the announcement that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are introducing new rules for lenders in handling short sales, there just may be more of them in the near future.  While some lenders have already been more inclined to process short sales to avoid the delays and costs of foreclosure, these new...

Real estate professionals have come a long way in learning the ropes for SEO, Search Engine Optimization, of their real estate website content.  However, many still complain that they don't get enough qualified leads from their websites, and they wonder if their SEO efforts are worth it....Read...

I don't list, and when I did, I didn't list foreclosures.  However, I admire real estate professionals who jump through all of the hoops to list homes for short sale, in pre-foreclosure, and foreclosed homes.  Between the extra paperwork and responsibilities placed on them by the lenders and...

Lagging by about 45 days, the FHFA, Federal Housing Finance Agency, House Price Index was just released for the period from January 12 through February 12 of 2012.  The U.S. composite index was up by 0.3%.  The nine Census Divisions tracked showed this performance:...Read Full Post

A couple of days ago, the FHFA, Federal Housing Finance Agency, issued a press release related to short sales.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have developed enhanced and aligned strategies for facilitating short sales, deeds-in-lieu, and deeds-for-lease.  These initiatives are designed to speed...