Matthew sheds light on baby boomer thinking at the 2009 Coldwell Banker Rally.
Watch this video Matthew discusses why buyers dislike the open house process.
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Here are seven secrets to making social networking one of your most powerful prospecting tools with today’s modern real estate buyers and sellers.

A recent survey shows text messaging is more popular amongst teens than Facebook. Never mind social media: How will you prospect to consumers who don’t have a phone at home?

The recession holds answers to the real estate industry’s troubles – if it’s willing to listen. Otherwise it might just find out who’s buried in Grant’s tomb.

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.

Are social network games just for fun – or powerful sales tools. Matthew Ferrara explores the Gen X / Gen Y sales potential of Farmville and other social media fun.

A while ago I wrote a short article comparing some of the “standard” real estate marketing tools with those of other industries. I remember commenting how REALTORS, who sell commodities in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, try to entice buyers with printouts made from an off-the-shelf inkjet printer on recycled paper, while automobile companies readily offer super-glossy-multi-page professional brochures to promote their lowliest of models. Of course, times change: When Baby Boomers invented the real estate industry, printing anything was a mimeographic achievement, so the small office printer was a revolutionary upgrade in marketing in the 1990s. Yet today’s buyers and sellers increasingly come from the Gen X and Gen Y demographics. Does anyone still think we’re going to re-start the housing market by handing out listing sheets? Let’s review some basic facts: Last year the average first time buyer was 31 years old, smack-in-the-middle of the Gen X/Y profile. This means many buyers were in their early twenties, while some lagged into old-age-thirties. Even the average seller was only 45 – the tail end of the Boomers, even if they try to pass themselves off as early X’ers. Either way we’re talking consumers who entertain on YouTube, [...]

Here’s a question you’re unlikely to hear asked in real estate companies these days: Is the stock market drop a GOOD or BAD thing for the housing industry’s current slump? At a time when nobody seems to have the answers – not the Fed, not Congress, not the Detroit auto makers – to turn around the economy, could it be that the market itself has found a way to revive the housing industry and jump start the economy. And all it takes is a good, old fashioned market crash?

Here’s a question that’s certain to be avoided by the real estate industry: What are you planning to do on the day that “taking a listing” becomes totally irrelevant? It’s coming, of course, and it’s not just because of a “housing recession” or any such calamity. Real estate based upon consumer needs, not actual “listings” will be the focus of the Next Generation of Real Estate. And clearly nobody is prepared.

Here’s a really easy way to help REALTORS improve their understanding of marketing – or more accurately, why Generation X and Y aren’t responding at all to their marketing. No, it’s not another diatribe against listings on REALTOR.COM with no photos; nor is it a generic rant against newspapers. If you don’t get that those don’t work by now, we don’t have a prescription for you. But if you want to laugh alongside a Gen Xer like me, then let’s play a good old game of show-and-tell. Which of the following direct-mail marketing pieces looks most like mailings you get from your local REALTOR: