It’s up to local real estate professionals to keep the American Dream alive. It’s a tough job, but they’re the best ones to do it. Here’s why.

Matthew's blog entry titled "NAR's RPR should RIP ASAP"
Watch this video Matthew discusses why buyers dislike the open house process.
Watch this video A market report from Matthew Ferrara & Company about buyers, compiled from the latest report from the National Association of Realtors (www.realtor.org).
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This week Fannie Mae, the government agency we love to hate, announced it would punish borrowers who strategically default on mortgages on non-performing housing assets. Funny how they didn’t mention their request for another $8.4 billion in taxpayer money last month.

Matthew Ferrara reviews the recent demographic information about today's modern real estate buyers and sellers.
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Real estate market got you down? REALTORS can learn the correct spells and incantations to keep the bad housing spirits away.

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.

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 [...]

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.