On Screen – a new weekly “launch” of news, commentary, resources, bloggers and other information you can use to get your week started – from Matthew Ferrara & Company.
In Part 1, we started the countdown towards May 1, the Day After. In Part 2, we offer ten suggestions for REALTORS to stay in business when the dust settles.
If the housing market fell nearly 17% the month after the original housing tax credits were supposed to end, what’s going to happen when they really do come to an end? Are REALTORS ready for the Day After?
Some questions Matthew Ferrara thinks REALTORS should be asking of FHA – before it’s too late.
Considering how notoriously misleading the Case-Shiller report is,does anyone wonder why buyers and sellers don’t believe a word of their REALTORS’s advice?
According to a new survey by NAR, by a factor of 4, most buyers think open houses are far more useless than they were just a year ago.
Hindsight is always 20/20, they say. Unless, of course, you spend most of your time navel gazing. So it’s almost myopic to point out that some ideas’ time has come. And other ideas’ time has passed. On one hand, it’s time for every sale to include in-house ancillary sales. On the other hand, it’s time for NAR to give up the dream of one HAL-like central database. Didn’t they find the bellybutton lint the last time they tried it?
Download a copy of the latest survey of REALTORS by the Center for REALTOR Technology and you’re certain to be fascinated – startled, perhaps – at what’s happening on the Bat-belts of modern agents trying to make buying and selling homes a twenty-first century experience. While the report is no page-turner – in fact, it looks a bit like it was produced on a Commodore 64 with dot-matrix fonts – a few facts stand out, highlighting just how easy it should be for serious salespeople to scoop up market share in the months to come. And all they really need would be a Blackberry and a thousand bucks.
Bizarre, Cool, Finally and Funny: Observations from the NAR Annual Conference, 2009 Each year, as thousands of REALTORS descend upon some unsuspecting city in American, we bring you observations from the event, complete with raised eyebrows of all kinds. This year’s Annual Convention of the National Association of REALTORS in San Diego is no exception: the 14,000 vendors, agents and industry leaders left us with no lack of bizarre, cool, finally and funny observations to share with you. So, without further ado, here goes. Bizarre: Why do all of the REALTOR conventions happen in cities with soaring homeless rates? It seems the height of irony that so many “home ownership professionals” gather in San Francisco, San Diego, New Orleans and Washington DC – ostensibly to learn new ways to sell more homes – only to find themselves taking the bus from hotel to convention center because the streets are overcrowded with people – without homes. Now, this isn’t to suggest that real estate conventions should only be held in places with low homeless rates – say, a nice tropical island – but it is to say that maybe the “local tour of luxury homes” and “annual pean to hammer-swinging a [...]
Launched this weekend at NAR’s Annual Convention in San Diego, Real Estate Brainchain, the new online video learning community from Matthew Ferrara & Company has drawn a lot of attention from REALTORS at the trade show. “Traffic to the booth has been terrific,” says Matthew Ferrara, “and the online traffic has been amazing as well.” Combining their live launch with a social media push, MF&C positioned the launch of Brainchain as a multi-media event. “We wanted the system to have a splash in person, as well as virtually. From what we can tell from both venues, we’re capturing a lot of interest – and early subscribers, as well.” Real Estate Brainchain combines the power and ease of learning by online video, with a broad array of sales, marketing, technology and management topics from industry experts like Ferrara, Martha Webb, Rich Sands and others, available on demand to meet the learning needs of busy real estate agents. “We already excel at on-site workshops, and delivered more than 4,000 online webinars last year. Now we want to make even more learning available to agents – whether an instructor-led session meets their schedule or not.” Derek Deveau, who has been leading the Brainchain [...]
November 12 – San Diego, CA – As the National Association of REALTORS Annual Convention opens this week in San Diego, Matthew Ferrara & Company announced the launch of its latest learning service, real estate brainchain (http://www.rebrainchain.com). The new online video learning community features high-quality training lessons for real estate professionals on a broad variety of topics like sales, marketing, technology and management. As easy to use as YouTube, but with real estate specific content, brainchain launches with almost 100 ready-to-learn lessons featuring some of the industry’s top trainers. “Brainchain changes the paradigm in online learning for REALTORS,” says Matthew Ferrara, CEO of Matthew Ferrara & Company, the parent of brainchain. “In the last two decades, we have repeatedly delivered innovations in real estate training, first by incorporating technology into the classroom, then by creating the industry’s largest delivery system of webinars. We’ll deliver more than 3500 webinars this year alone, but we still don’t think that’s enough availability and affordability for the industry. That’s why we’re introducing real estate brainchain.” The new platform uses the latest video innovations to change how real estate professionals use the internet to grow their business. While many real estate agents have been using [...]
Live from NAR Starts Friday – with Matthew FerraraThose who do not learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. So said someone we’ve all long forgotten, but I’m sure you can Google it. But rather than worry about who said it, shouldn’t we be worrying about whether we’ve heeded the advice? As 20,000 REALTORS make the annual migration to the National Association of REALTORS Convention, maybe we can know what to expect by looking back at what happened last time.
Real estate is essentially a research industry: trouble is, most agents and brokers think the most important research is about houses, prices, square footage and such. Considering the data that sits in most MLS systems – unverified and incomplete – you’d think they would know better by now. In fact, the best research for any sales industry isn’t the commodity data but the customer specs and competition capabilities. Knowing everything there is to know about the consumer – and the competitors who are trying to beat you to their door – is far more fascinating. And given the state of the housing industry, also more revealing.
Ten Questions with Real Estate Expert Matthew Ferrara By Dianna Kawell Reposted with permission from WCR’s site.Real estate is becoming an increasingly technology-driven industry. Every day, a typical REALTOR® depends heavily on her laptop, GPS and digital camera to get the job done. For what was long believed to be a face-to-face business, 88 percent of REALTORS® now report using e-mail as the preferred method of communicating with their clients.However, REALTOR® Web sites may be the one neglected piece of the technology puzzle. Perhaps, it is because agents see little tangible results from their personal Web sites. In the latest Member Profile from the National Association of REALTORS®, members reported on average just four inquiries generated by their Web sites over 12 months—accounting for just 3 percent of their overall business for that year.In the past year, with members reporting a 14-percent drop in gross income from real estate, these already neglected Web sites have seemingly moved completely to the back burner. NAR is reporting a 20-percent drop in the dollar investment that REALTORS® are making in their Web sites from 2007 to 2008, with the number of REALTORS® who invested zero dollars in their Web sites increasing from 18 [...]
In one of the cruel ironies of the housing market today, the total number of units sold this year isn’t that far from historically normal volume. According to the National Association of REALTORS, the seasonally adjusted annual rate for sales in May is around 4.77 million – generally trending the pre-bubble long-term volume for a typical year. Some segments continue to decline – such as housing starts – but it makes sense to stop adding more units to the million-plus excess inventory units available already. Clearing the excess inventory remains an important goal for the market. Only when supply and demand level off will prices stabilize. Yet real estate companies find themselves doing the same (or more) work for less results. Even selling historically normal units prevent a revenue decline; and nobody’s picking up “extra” units these days. With median home prices down 30% to around $173,000, volume strategies alone cannot sustain most brokerages. Thankfully, the consumer has provided real estate professionals with a ready-made solution. It’s up to brokers and agents to start selling it. Just like they used to.
