Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

If you think communicating with Gen X sellers and Gen Y buyers was tough, get ready for a whole new level of (neo)communication as the “next, next generation” and hope you don’t see CYA L8R, RLTR come across your cell phone.

The real estate industry’s message remains that housing is a good “investment.” The question is: to whom?

For all the efforts to clear the U.S. housing market, the sheer scale of the real estate crash defies even the most aggressive approaches like short selling. What’s needed to get the country out from under a crushing debt crisis and inventory glut is an idea that’s been keeping markets healthy and wealthy for decades, Down Under.

Tweet, text or type an email. Communicating is easier and faster than ever. Yet are there still certain times where it’s still best to meet in person or pick up the phone?

Maximize the summer selling season with our ten simple conversation starters for home owners.

There are two basic reasons why companies fail: unwillingness to embrace the obvious changes of their day, and a smug rejection of customer feedback. At Barnes and Noble, you can get both.

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.

The real estate and mortgage industries are paying the price for Fannie Mae’s free-lunch fraud. Looks like the people who couldn’t afford “affordable housing” most weren’t just consumers, but its most vocal advocates.

Matthew Ferrara offers ten ways to start focusing on what you can – and will – do this year to reach your success.

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?

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.

It has often been said that sales is a contact sport. If so, then every opportunity to work closely with consumers is a sales moment. Real estate sales professionals know that it’s all about relationships. So it’s important to never let a good sales moment go to waste. If you’re serious about a sales career, then selling means more than just showing up. And one place to start selling more is at the Open House.

For many real estate brokers and agents, the hot technology today is social networking. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are the “new new thing” for making friends and influencing business. There’s probably no better tools for directly prospecting your marketplace – and maintaining your referral and repeat business base. But let’s not lose sight of the other pieces of the social networking-sphere, notably those technologies that we all take for granted, but may not be maximizing to drive web traffic and sell more homes. Long before there was social networking, there was social bookmarking, a system for recommending cool web content to your friends – and millions of others. The real estate industry should revisit these networks  as free systems to drive web traffic without increasing their marketing budgets.