Contributed by Tori Toth A woman who lived in her home for over 25 years, who raised four kids there, is now ready to live a simpler life. She contacted a home staging company to help downsize to a two-bedroom condo. Over the phone, she mentioned removing items she no longer needed. The woman sounded excited to get started, however, upon arrival for the consultation,...
If there was a magic formula for selling real estate quickly and easily, you can bet every real estate agent would be signing up. Real estate sales affect agents, buyers and sellers one way or another. Although homes need to be in good condition and offer what buyers are currently seeking, ultimately the real estate agent drives the sales. To stay on top of their...
For all the talk of recovery, blighted communities appear immune to progress. This phenomenon, once thought common to urban settings, is in fact universal, according to a recent Keep America Beautiful (KAB) report that expounded upon an issue that can be felt even in the most rural communities. “The term ‘blight’ continues to evolve as communities confront different...
Contributed by Karen Highland Keeping a consistent real estate blog is a lot of work. On top of the actual job of being a REALTOR®, a blog requires a layer of technical knowledge and writing skill, and demands some artistic and creative talent as well. Successful blogging also requires continued learning; as search and web technologies change, a blogger must keep...
Coined by Verl Workman, moderator of RISMedia’s recent webinar “Yes, You Can List 100 Homes a Year!” and founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems, the “unfair competitive advantage” describes the one asset that elevates an agent above all others in his or her marketplace. As attendees soon learned, webinar panelists Bob Sokoler and Martin Bouma have the...
Despite the continuous cycle that drives housing, there’s one commodity, arguably more valuable than any other, which remains impervious to the ebbs and flows of the market, relentlessly in demand while in an ever-present glut: information. The problem? To get it, we’re accessing a muddled Internet, where information, including real estate know-how, can come from...
Prospective homebuyers may see a few more weeks of near-zero mortgage rates following news that the Federal Reserve will maintain its current interest rate policy. Economists have long anticipated a rate change in September of this year. “The (Federal Open Market) Committee anticipates that it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate...
By Tyler Zey One of the biggest things REALTORS® struggle with is finding profitable ways to generate leads online, and this is actually a pretty hard thing to accomplish. However, there are two types of ads that work in almost every real estate market. I’m going to show you two ways that you can effectively generate profitable leads using Google Ads. Let’s...
Last month at the REALTORS® Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo, NAR made the .REALTOR domain available to local and state REALTOR® associations as well as brokerages in the U.S. and Canada. This move followed the domain’s launch to NAR members this past October. Before the year is out, NAR will up the ante even further by rolling out the .realestate domain...
Contributed by John Egan, SpareFoot.com If you’re looking for areas where the U.S. population is rising the most, just look in the South or West. Communities in those two regions dominate recent population growth trends, with a few exceptions. “Over the next 15 years, America is in for tremendous demographic change,” Emily Badger of the Washington Post recently...
