As we watch economic woes across the board we need to be sure that the US auto industry is driven to survive!

Remember $4.00+/gal gasoline, how did that feel, did it impact your life style, do you think it impacted your business? Let the US auto industry fail and you can kiss the opportunity to free ourselves of foreign oil dependency good bye and who knows what fuel prices might become. Forget about the development of fuel efficent alternatives, energy source alternatives. Why because we won't have any control over what kind of vehicles we drive. Forget about cafe standards we will take what we get.

Think About it if we don't have any US Auto Maker competition for the foreign competitors, who has all the power, sure we're a big customer and we provide competition to them with our BIG Three, the big three that is committing to better fuel efficiency, alternative sources. Now take them away, will we have the clout over foreign makers when we have no competition for them or will they just say take what we give you?

What if other countries tell them we'll take what you offer, that will further erode our clout. We need to make sure the US Auto industry succeeds, to let us keep our clout with foreign auto makers, otherwise lets get ready for $4,5,6,7.00....... a gallon gas OR MORE! Then lets continue to pay escalating prices for EVERYTHING that involves transportation cost, like food, homes, clothes, appliances, you can finish the list........  

Will Fiat leave Chrysler here or just shut it down espcecially if GM and or Ford goes under, we need all three to keep our presence and protect our wallets.

This message is really for people who need a web presence and don't have it or don't know they need it, for those of you who are up to speed, PLEASE "do a friend a favor" and pass it on to someone you know that fits one of those categories.

Over the past few weeks I have been in the process of revamping my entire marketing strategy, rethinking my website strategy, blog strategy and this crazy little thing called Social Media Marketing. I started out thinking I had it all figured out, I'd just make some decisions about my websites, then I'd review my blogs and poof I have a new marketing strategy in place fro my web presence, well nothing was further from the truth, I got side tracked, I started paying attention to my Twitter account, that has cost me hours of reading, thinking, studying and more importantly realizing the change I had embarked on was much bigger than I thought! I first realized that I need to enlarge my Twitter presence so I began working on that, then I realized I might need to create a second Twitter account to fine tune what I was in the process of doing, yet to be done by the way, needless to say it has become a big task, the amount of information available to help us succeed is huge and yet overwhelming. I continue to develop a new me on the internet and am excited about all that is coming together.

So here is one of my conclusions and really the HEART OF THE MESSAGE, I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that the way we see, do, use MARKETING & ADVERTISING TODAY will BECOME OBSOLETE within THE NEXT 2-4 YEARS!! If people haven't already committed to the Internet, I truly feel for them, the task will either sideline them or overwhelm them. The need for commitment to Social Media is coming at us faster than the speeding bullet and yes Superman; it will be more powerful than a locomotive and yes Superman. The biggest problem we will face as professionals is to get it right and use it right. I have learned that it is much more than just haphazardly signing up at Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Twitter, MySpace, and a thousand other places out there. You need to first sit down and identify your objective, make it one sentence, think of keywords that might define your objective, 10, 20, 50 of them, then decide which of those places you want to have a presence, create consistency throughout the process, interlink them, once you have them setup find people to connect with that will help you complete your sentence, also be developing articles to post to your blog, informative articles not Sales pitches, one way to start developing these is every time you have a thought you want to share write a starter sentence, build up a collection of them and as you have time, develop them into what you want to say, that way you will always have a shelf full of things to share and it gives you the opportunity to fine tune them, have you ever written something and a day or two later wished you would have done it another way, said something more , you get the idea.  Along the way create your more direct business identity through your blog and blog posts and your website, this is the ultimate destination, the place you want to get people to use your product or services, this is Your Storefront.

All that said this message may very well "SELF DESTRUCT" in a day, a week, a month because The Social Media Train runs at supersonic speeds, you need to get a ticket for a good seat and get on board.

Just watched Jim Cramer on CNBC, he is hot on the idea that Bernahkes  announcement will turn the housing market around, no, has turned the market around, has forced the bottom. 4% rates for everyone. He said run to buy a homes. The key to everything he said was that the housing market has to turn for us to have a recovery and thinks this is it.

My thoughts, I agree the housing market has taken us into economic downturns in the past and and has brought us out of it as well. I heard the other day that now is the BEST time for people to invest in NEW banks mainly because they start out with not having the baggage of this economy, makes sense to me, but I'll go one better. It was the recession of the early '80's that took down an industry called "Savings & Loans" federally insured financial institutions who primarily dealt with consumer savings, Mortgages and Personal Loans. What an interesting  concept, get the mortgage business away from commercial lending where one doesn't influence the other and people have a vehicle to save real money again, what do you think?

I am concerned about housing having the impact it has had in the past on a recovery this time around. I think it might get started, but run out of gas before it can have the impact we need to have the econmic explosion we need as in past recoveries. That said I do believe there is a solution, its one that is going to require the financial industry to roll up their sleeves throw out some of their rules and add a few others, if they do it right it WILL bring about recovery across the economy, thats another post. 

WAKE UP REALTORS!!

So we are in a bad economy, what are YOU doing about it, sitting around waiting for someone else to fix it, passing the buck, getting depressed, going negative, what are YOU doing about it???

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again and again..... The Realtors closed their eyes as the lending industry took over our role as the central figure in the real estate transaction and in the midst of an economical crisis, that I quite frankly believe is owned by the lending industry exclusively, are still keeping themselves in front of the real estate consumer first. I just received a copy of a program being offered by EDU Programs ( http://www.eduprograms.org   ) through Prime Lending to the teaching industry, there they are again getting ahead of us as Realtors we need to WAKE UP!!  What are WE doing to assist the consumers, conducting Short Sale business, BPO's working on REO's? These are still a small part of the overall market, what are we going to do, keep making Short Sales, continuing to  drive the market values down as we go, creating more short sales, more foreclosures, more BPO' and REO's, if that is the plan we don't deserve to be in this industry, I said industry, not business, because we are an industry and we are an industry that has fixed this problem in the past and can fix it in the future, I know, in the 35 years I've been in this business, I've seen these economic downturns, I saw one that collapsed the Saving and Loan Industry and almost took down the banking industry with it, I've sold in markets when mortgage rates were 18-20%, we CAN fix this problem but we need to get involved.

So what do WE do, how about going to your Boards, Local and State, ask them what they are doing, how about getting groups of Realtors together in roundtables and discuss this problem develop solutions, argue, agree, disagree expect your Boards to get in involved in local and state solutions, discuss how you can get together with local media to turn the discussions positive, make sure your local boards are pressing the state and national boards to create actionable things that show we are Professionals and that we are the central figure in the real estate transaction and that we can lead this economy out of the economic downturns!!!! Start in your offices; start in the coffee shops with other Realtors. LETS WAKE UP and START!!!!!

What are your ideas, your thoughts, share the here for other to see, you might give them an idea!!!!

I thought I had seen everything, 18-20% mortgage Rates, out of sight material costs for new homes, and then along comes this market. Prices tumbling, vacancies rising, lenders that can't figure out what to do, Real Estate agents fueling the downward spirals with something called Short Sales. Challenges are fun:)

Its kind of ashamed that Real Estate Agents are thought of as a less than honorable profession and what do we do to change it when we can, we come up with a thing called shorts sales that does nothing to stimulate a recovery. I see people advertising that for a fee they will teach how to reap the rewards of this dismal housing market by getting people out of there homes for something less than foreclosure status and they will sit on the sidelines for a few years but it won't be as bad as a foreclosure so its a really good deal for who? Not the neighborhood, not the economy, not the marketplace, oh yes, good for the real estate agents that would rather work get rich quick schemes. That's how it comes across in the advertising to take the courses, but I wonder about the value when they say, things like, "and the best part is you get "baited Buyers"  that sounds "fishy" to me, or they talk about going under contract with the seller then tell the bank one value and the homeowner another so you can "create" a handsome little profit for themselves.

Maybe short Sales are the answer, maybe we as an industry should dig a little deeper, try a little harder and come up with solutions that make us look like a "Professional Industry, show we care about the neighborhoods and that we care about our economy. There are solutions and we are the industry that can do more to bring about a recovery than any other out there, we have in the past, but we won't do it going the way were going. 

As I peruse the emails coming to my inbox from all of the people trying to sell me the magic solution to riches I begin to understand why we as Realtors are considered a less than professional industry. The biggest offering today is "How to make a fortune off of people who are losing their houses" i.e. short sales, pre-foreclosure, foreclosures, bankruptcies and the list goes on.

In today's uncertain economic times it seems to me that we should be thinking more about what role can we play in providing a viable solution or solutions to the uncertain economic times in our country. History shows that the real estate industry has often brought our economy out of economic downturns due to the huge impact it has on providing jobs and generating a strong after closing economy because of increased retail sales at a number of levels, furniture, landscaping, painting, decorating, home improvements and the list goes on. It seems like our Associations, NAR, State Boards and Local Boards should develop task forces that will be working hard to develop strategies that will provide positive ways to help Real Estate recover at the national, state and local levels. You know I should have said that the other way around, "At the Local, State and National level", because the approach needs to be bottom up rather than top down to be totally effective.

As I look at the short-sale, foreclosure, bankruptcy market it becomes pretty clear, if someone doesn't start trying to solve it rather than make a killing off it we will never see an economic recovery. These two approaches, lets just call them "Economy Killers" for the rest of this discussion, from a lenders standpoint are the same as they have always been and they are outdated. We have more and are creating more vacancies in the housing market than I have ever seen in my 36 years in the real estate industry. Look at what is happening, people are being pushed out of their homes in record numbers and then told they have to sit on the sidelines for the next 2,5,7 years before the lending industry will "let" them buy a home or have credit again. So a large part of the population that have been homeowners are taken out of the equation for recovery. As more foreclosures and short sales take place its like building a snowman, you start to roll out the first ball of snow and it starts getting larger faster and faster as it gets bigger, this is what is happening in our real estate economy because of Economy Killers as more come into the market they drive prices and values down even further causing local values to go down, causing more people to become affected by the declining values bringing more people into a short sale or foreclosure situation causing further declines and so on and so on and so on!!! Ooopps now our get rich Economy Killers have totally denigrated the housing market leaving a bunch of vacancies, a huge supply of potential homeowners who have to sit on the sidelines for a number of years deflated home values and now the recovery we have counted on in the past will never get off of the ground because there aren't enough buyers to make an impact and more importantly there is no "push" up in the market because all of the vacancies are dead end deals rather than creating a push which in the past has counted for anywhere from 2 to maybe six or seven upward sales!

If we want to be thought of as Professionals, maybe we should start asking the serious questions, what can we do to help this industry turn our economy around, how can we stop this downward spiral of property values, how can we stabilize home values, what can we do to contribute to a plan that will allow the real estate industry to do what it has done so successfully in the past, bring our economy out of decline into recovery and stability? Let the discussions/actions begin....