Consumers are desperate to refinance and lenders are overwhelmed with workouts. Fidelity National Information Services just launched a web-based loan-modification and electronic-signature utility for their ClosingStream e-mortgage platform that make the process painless for everyone. Mortgage may be the leader in Transaction Management The benefit to lenders is a reduction in costs associated with servicing the new loan agreements. The benefit to consumers is that they can cut down a 10 day process to a few minutes on a website. "The e-sign feature provides benefits to both the customer and lender by providing an effective and efficient method to present, [...]

Multi Language Property Search   If you drive through the rust belt of America stretching from New York State to Michigan, you cannot help but to be dismayed by the dilapidated plants that line our state highways - specifically Highway 90, but there are many others.  Somehow we lost touch with manufacturing, and many factories went abroad. Now they are coming back. Along the country roads of Alabama, little more is seen than farm land and grazing cattle, gently rolling hills and the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.  If you look closely, however, you will see change. Mobile, Alabama is [...]

Advise to REALTORS - Budget your online advertising first and make it 50% of your total marketing budget. Advertising in newspapers is overly expensive, few people under 50 use them, and many who do are just a little out of it. Professionals today are reading their Blackberries iPhones and iPads every waking hour of the day and consuming news in real time, shopping for summer homes, and waiting for business opportunities to ping them from somewhere. Print does not attract people who want to own a fine watch, let alone a half dozen of them - sitting in an automatic Swiss [...]

There may be a landslide shake up happening in the search engine industry which could form a company to rival Google’s 50% marketshare of search. This consolidation could lead to disapated competition in pay per click, and drive up costs for real estate online marketing. […]

Today’s announcement by Point2 Technologies may be a signal of what is to come next under the new leadership at Point2. Saul Klein is well known through his efforts in delivering agent products and services under the e-Pro program and via REAL TOWN. Now with Walt Baczkowski on board (pun intended), I would suspect that Point2 will begin to roll out a plan to deliver thier products and services to agents through MLS and REALTOR Associations agreements Walt Baczkowski is a popular and well known industry executive, having held CEO and EO positions across the country. Regardless of any change [...]

As a student of philosophy I often found value in considering the extremes of an issue before trying to understand the balance. An article published this week in The New York Times gave an extreme example of an International real estate market that provides valuable consideration of where we are today in our real estate market. In Havana, Cuba, 100% of the real property is owned by the socialist state.  Hence, in theory, there is no real estate economic market, right?  Seriously, if you need a house, the government provides you one.  Simple. Add the human element and then what [...]

ClarisResources.com - Valuable tools for providing real estate market logic to consumers During the California Association of REALTORS meetings this week, Real Estate Business Services, Inc. (REBS) announced a partnership with Terradatum to offer two terrific new services for agents to help them better serve the information needs of their clients. “Consumers are exposed to constant housing market chatter, and these tools provide meaningful information, specific and relevant to the consumer’s situation,” said REBS Chairman of the Board Gary Thomas. “Clarus REsourceTM enhances the position of REALTORS® as trusted, skilled advisors by providing them with tools to easily interpret raw [...]

One Simple Method for Improving MLS Listing Data Accuracy For many MLSs around the country, missing photos consistently rank as one of the most prevalent problems with MLS listings. Not only does it create the potential for a subscriber to receive a fine, it significantly limits the ability to market a property. Now that digital cameras are included in just about every cell phone and digital cameras cost as little as $29.95, it does seem like the time has come for all MLSs to require a photo before the listing can go live. In a soon to be released study [...]

Smartphones in Real Estate Off The Charts Smartphones are becoming extremely popular, especially now that AT&T, the largest mobile phone service provider in the United States is heavily promoting $99 smartphones.  Growth of the smartphone market is being driven by adoption of BlackBerry and other brands, but NOT by phones with the Palm operating system. The market is projected to have 30% compounded annual growth for the next five years. According to In-Stat, a leading technology company identified the following: All Smartphone OSs (other than the Palm OS) will grow at double digits over the next five years. A smartphone [...]

One of my favorite jokes goes something like this. What happens when you play a country music song backwards? Your wife moves back in, your dog is revived, you get a new truck.. I had a very interesting conversation last night with Bill French, one of the brightest minds in the world of Blogging.  We discussed what happens when someone turns off a blog that they have had for a year or two with weekly posting. His answer was shocking One customer who recently truned off thier blog and replaced it with nothing removed 93% of the content from thier [...]

Lather, Rinse, Repeat - the secret to clean hair and real estate success I attended the Inman Connect conference in New York last week. I attended several of the sessions and spoke on a panel about productivity tools. Throughout the couple of days, I got the distinct impression that many of the agents were there to get "the secret" about how to survive and thrive in a down market.  In my session on productivity tools, for example, I was asked the question, "What are the three tools that you would recommend to help me grow my business?" While there were [...]