The market is off.  How far off varies by market and niche.  Nevertheless, everyone is challenged - agents, brokers, franchisers, franchisees, and MLSs.  Here is a list of tangible ideas that may help you in your business today.  To sum up the recommendations - focus on enhancing agent quality rather then building the largest army. According to some at the RIS CEO Exchange, we have gone from a volume of 7 Million transactions in 2005 to 5 Million transactions forecasted for 2008.  How should brokers respond to manage their companies effectively in this market?  Manage with urgency! William Keleher, Broker/Owner [...]

(IRVINE, Calif.) – The housing research firm RealtyTrac reports foreclosures continue to plague the housing market, with the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process reaching 739,714, a 14 percent increase over the first quarter and 121 percent increase over the same period in 2007. The company says one in every 171 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the quarter. Although much of the foreclosure activity is concentrated in Nevada, California, Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Michigan, RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio said almost all areas of the country are seeing some increase. In hard-hit Nevada, 1 in every 43 households received a foreclosure filing during [...]

SAN FRANCISCO (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) July 22, 2008 -- In conjunction with the Inman News Real Estate Connect Conference, LightPole, Inc., a mobile application service provider for content publishers, today announced a focus on the real estate vertical with Trulia and Brownstoner. These innovative partners are building solutions on the LightPole mobile platform to provide their customers with unprecedented access to a wealth of real-time real estate information, no matter where they are. By offering solutions that address the entire spectrum of the market, the LightPole system demonstrates the scale and capabilities needed for category leaders such as Trulia, [...]

Lasso Data Systems Inc., the leading designer and developer of innovative on-demand customer relationship management software for the real estate industry, today announced the launch of its 750th Project using its real estate software. For Immediate Release CULVER CITY, Calif./EWORLDWIRE/July 14, 2008 --- Lasso Data Systems Inc., the leading designer and developer of innovative "on-demand" Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for the real estate industry, today announced the launch of its 750th Project using its real estate sales & marketing software. Realty Trust Group Inc., a leading real estate sales and marketing agency that has sold more than $1.1 billion [...]

This is really off topic for our blog, but so many of our twitter firends are having trouble upgrading their itunes and iphone to version 2.0 Steps to upgrading to iPhone Firmware version 2.0 (w/App Store) 1. Go to Apple Menu —–> Then “Software Update…” and install iTunes 7.7. 2. Go here and It should autcoatiallcy start the download for the new firmware. 3. Once it is finished make sure the file ends in “.ipsw” if you find it ends in “.zip” just erase the .zip from the extension 4. With your iPhone connected to your computer, go to iTunes where [...]

J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate, recently announced the launch of a mobile version of his company’s award-winning website, www.JohnLScott.com. Now, consumers in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho can search for nearby properties and look up comprehensive listing information on their cellular phone by going to M.JohnLScott.com.  The launch of John L. Scott’s mobile website is the first step towards a larger scale launch with technology partner, Microsoft. Later this year, John L. Scott will be the first real estate company in the nation to roll out Microsoft’s newest Silverlight technology. Silverlight is a browser-based application that integrates [...]

MLSAlliance demonstrates MLS industry’s ongoing efforts to help real estate professionals succeed during housing market downturn. Boca Raton, FL (PRWEB) July 9, 2008 – Many Californians looking for signs of stability in the turbulent real estate market are encouraged by the growth and increasing use of the state’s largest MLS data sharing service, the California MLSAlliance. The system connects MLS databases throughout the state to provide agents and brokers with a single source of real estate information. Use of the California MLSAlliance reached an all-time record in May, with more than 50,000 unique agents and brokers using the system to [...]

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NAR Research disclosed the new REALTOR® demographics today in an article printed in their newsletter Real Estate Insights. This is an important strategic benchmark for service providers to the real estate industry to remember – impacting marketing communications, product usability, and support expectations.  Here is a summary. […]

Just over two years ago I was really excited about a purchase of my IBM ThinkPad. It had a really “fast” processor and “state of the art” security.  How quickly my enthusiasm waned, however.  My computer became slower and slower and more and more frustrating every day. At the same time I purchased a PC my partner Victor Lund purchased a Mac Book.  His computer was intuitive, fast and just about never crashed.  It was great for building slick graphics for power point presentations and terrific at collaborating and editing documents.  It was getting consistently “smarter” with the way it [...]

Yup, that is the call of the wild. Organized online real estate is facing the biggest change since the launch of IDX, and the seeds of that change are already beginning to sprout.The Department of Justice settlement with the National Association of REALTORS instigated changes to VOW or Virtual Office Website policies for the display of listings on an agent or broker website.   Although the settlement did little to change the IDX or Internet Data Exchange policies, it may have that unintended consequence as MLSs grapple with the best way for VOW data to be displayed. […]

Online consumer shopping behavior has changed the way consumers shop for real estate. I am currently looking for a new car. Knowing that car salesmen are notorious for creating a lot of sales pressure by trying to close the deal and negotiate the highest price they can regardless of the competition, I have avoided visiting any car dealerships yet.  To start the process I visited automotive.com.  While there I looked at every luxury sedan available and learned more about each of their unique features and benefits. Since I am a pretty loyal BMW fan, I then went to the BMWUSA.com [...]