Matthew Ferrara explores how properly staging a home’s unique value proposition can make your listings more competitive in a tough market.

Facebook’s face lift confusion provides businesses a good lesson in how not to confuse your customers while building your brand.

According to NAR and Radar Logic, home prices rose month-to-month from April to May in 10 cities in America, like Boston, Charlotte, Seattle and Denver. Words like “recovery” are used in the press release, because, at least from the Voice of REALTORS, the word “inflation” is off limits. Since the press release is just a snippet, it’s likely to be passed around without much analysis. Too bad, because it’s likely to mislead a lot of consumers. Let’s just do a little math: According to the data, home prices rose around 3-5%. According to another report from NAR, the median sales price natiowide in the first quarter was around $196,600. If we take the median increase of 4% of the median price, you’ll get $7864, which is awfully close to the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers. Which means, if we’re really honest, the home price increse isn’t due to positive market forces, like recovery, but negative forces, called inflation. And a very specific type of inflation: market distorting, government subsidy-dollar inflation. That’s not any sign of a housing recovery. That’s simply called smart sellers. They know that buyers have access to free Greenbacks, so they bumped up their [...]

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.

This video made me jump up out of my seat and cheer! Finally, a businessman who isn’t embarrassed by what he earns – and is willing to defend it in front of the mass purveyors of guilt, the Media. Every REALTOR should watch this clip and see what it looks like when someone stands up and says, Yes, dammit! I’m worth every penny! I may get paid a lot, but I create a LOT MORE value in return. We need a lot more of this kind of attitude in the industry these days – rather than the doom, gloom, hat-in-hand wimpishness that’s rotting our industry. From the inside out. REALTORS face this kind of “you are overpaid” attack every day. From the media. From dis-intermediaries who think their fancy websites can kill the traditionally paid agent. As if there were something wrong with being paid, traditionally. And of course, we hear it from consumers sitting across the table from us. You want how much in commission? Wow, that’s a lot! Do you deserve it? Shouldn’t you charge less because my house is declining in value? And suddenly, the consumer has the upper hand, doling out guilt without the facts. And [...]

Ok, here’s a totally unscientific study: 1. I bumped into a REALTOR last night at the registration desk for a conference we’ll be attending today. She was telling me that she had three offers on three properties yesterday and she has another that is coming in this morning. All are likely to be accepted. She is busier than ever! 2. A house three doors down from my home in Andover sold in under a week last month; it actually had multiple offers and it entered a bidding war (My neighbor was one of them). Two more homes within a mile just went on the market and sold within about ten days as well. NONE of these homes was a “prize” catch. In fact, one of them was so ugly, the “front door” was in the BACK of the house and only two garage doors faced the street (honest!). It’s definitely a “tear down” project. 3. Gold dropped about $25 yesterday. That tells me the dollar is getting stronger. Which means commodity prices may start to flatten or even fall. A stronger dollar means more purchasing power for the consumer, and with so much inventory at bargain prices (3 million unoccupied [...]

by Matthew Ferrara By now, every real estate professional knows the power of Google. Need to find something on the web? Go to google.com and type it in. Don’t worry about spelling (it suggests corrections if you mistype) and just use normal language. In nanoseconds, more pages than you could ever click are presented for your perusal. The same approach applies to Google News, Google’s Froogle shopping area, pictures, blogs, you name it. Search and find. And that, most of us think, is what Google is all about. But what about the other Google? You know, the one in which the multi-billion dollar behemoth puts its marketing clout to work for you and your website in ways you could never do by yourself. And not just the search engine placement and pay-per-click stuff either. I mean the other Google – the one that makes radio ads available for as little as $2 and newspaper ads for up to 93% off.