By Trisha Ocona Francis Being a real estate professional is more than just helping people sell, buy, or rent property, but rather assisting them in achieving their real estate goals. One of the best ways in doing so is by narrowing down your practice of real estate to an area you know extremely well, enjoy doing, and are committed to …
2012: The Year of the Professional
By Veronica Barragan Some REALTORS® conceived 2012 as “The Year of Volume Transactions” because lower home prices created the need to increase transactions to keep up with personal career goals while maintaining life styles and income. In actuality, 2012 has quickly become “The Year of the Professional.” We’re in an environment where REALTORS® celebrate authentic, professional standards, and embrace all …
Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty? No…it’s Neither!
By Dave Robison The crowd cheers, “Half-full, half-full!” Buzzer rings…nope, the answer is neither. Why are so many people saying the glass is half-full? There are people saying half-empty as well. Those Debbie Downers (the half-empty glass people) might say something like this: “Ohhhh, the market, it’s awful. It’s killed our business.” Those saying their glass is half-full might say something like …
Housing Affordability at All-Time High
By Jared James Did you know that cash buyers have made up over 30 percent of the overall buying market for five consecutive months? To give you some context, only two short years ago cash buyers only accounted for about 12 percent of the market. More importantly, do you know how to leverage them to make more money this year? …
Groupon Could Be a Real Estate Marketing Mecca
By Jared James Part of my job as a real estate speaker/trainer is to keep up to date on the latest news, fads, tools and technologies that come out so that I can determine if I think they are here to stay and worth covering with REALTORS®, or if they are here today and gone tomorrow and not worth our …
Keep that Sign in the Ground
By Cory Brewer Last summer, an agent in my office took on a listing with high hopes…the market in this particular neighborhood was moving fast and prices seemed to be pretty stable. Unfortunately, though, by the time the clients were ready to hit the market, some of the neighboring comps had slashed prices (assumably to try and get sold before …
Great Home or a Great Deal?
By Jason O’Neil Are the two at odds with one another? I say yes. I begin each buyer consultation with the simple question: “Do you want a great deal or do you want a great home?” The responses are typical: “Both! Ha Ha Ha…I mean, can’t we get both?” “Uhhhhh. Great home?” “Somewhere between.” “Great home. Good deal. Is that …
Real Estate in 2011
By Brooke Wolford If you are reading this post and are still active in real estate, congratulations! You have survived a year of many challenges. You can pat yourself on the back remember how hard your worked. Feel a sense of accomplishment and embrace every challenge that was put in front of you. We faced many challenges. We had good …
A Part Time Agent Isn’t Necessarily Less of an Agent
By Toby Boyce I stood quietly waiting for the smiling-innocent faces to calm down as they stared back at me. They were so fresh and ready to change the world. Was I teaching another class of new REALTORS® in one of my CE classes? I wish; the faces were third-graders at a local middle school. I was their “guest teacher” …
Congratulations: The Best and The Worst
By Brian Copeland If you are a young professional and have entered the real estate profession any time from 2004-2007, I want to be the first to congratulate you. When you can no longer consider yourself a whippersnapper and Lady GAGA music is now playing on the Golden Oldies station, you can then say one thing proudly as a REALTOR®, …