As the Technology Integration Specialist for Area Pro Realty I talk daily with agents in our franchises from around the country. In addition to questions about using our technology they ask how the real estate market is doing and what my projections are for the future. My answer is always the same, it's doing great if you focus on the specific needs of buyers and sellers in your area. Once you become an agent with the knowledge buyers and sellers are so desperately seeking you will get excited about the possibilities that abound on every street.

Buyers and Sellers in today's market are not sure how to go about meeting their goals, whether buying or selling a property. An informed agent can provide them with the information they need to make informed decisions. After all, isn't that in our job description?

So if you are experiencing a slow year, turn it around with a comprehensive marketing strategy to get back in the game. That strategy starts with educating yourself about the real estate market in your area and the best approaches for buying selling. Short sales, REO's or convention sellers each require a different approach and information. Compile the market information for each category into an easy to understand package that can be presented to sellers depending on which category they fall into.

In addition to being the technology specialist for Area Pro Realty I'm a licensed real estate broker. Most of my time is spent at corporate helping agents understand technology, but I still take on a couple deals a year so I can stay informed about a dynamic real estate market. A recent listing presentation reinforced what I've stated here, clients are confused about the market and are looking for answers so they can make informed decisions. They are looking to you for help.

I could go on and on about using technology to increase your exposure on the Internet and how to attract more business, but that does little good if you don't have the essential materials to follow through. So get back to the basics, education, marketing and follow through, it will make a difference in how you perceive the real estate market.

As the technology integration specialist for Area Pro Realty my duties include finding and evaluating new technology to help our agents locate new business. I signed up for a Posterous account some months back but had not had the time to really put it to test.

One of the things I like about Posterous is it allows me to auto update my twitter, facebook and other social media sites by just posting in one location. Today I'll be testing those features and will report my findings in another blog post.

The Alamo, CA home market summary below for Active, Pending and Sold listings. The Pending and Sold homes are dated from June, 20 2010 to July 20, 2010.

Active Listings= 1, Avg. days on the market= 110 days.

Pending Listings taken off market in the last 30 days= 19 (Keep in mind some of these pending listings are short sales and may never close.

Sold Listings, close escrow and buyers took possesion= 1

By dividing the number of active listings by the number that went pending in the last 30 days we get the months of inventory, number of months to sell active listings at the rate of pending listings.

110 divided by 19 = 5.8 months of inventory.

When you are ready to start your Alamo home search give us a call.

Join me today on Techcall for a discussion about blogging and SEO.

www.blogtalkradio.com/techcall

11:00 am to 11:30am PST

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

Gene Ward

Broker and Technology Supervisor at Area Pro Realty

Latest marketing statistics from Alamo, California. April 27th, 2010.

 Let's put these numbers into perspective. A 38 million dollar listing was removed (where indicated), from the statistics as it's an unusually high price.

1. Sold (coe), in the last 30 days = 1, the remaining closed after the 1st of the year but before 3/27/2010.

2. DOM is less for pending listings. Pending listings DOM is 61% of Active.

3. The Avg. sold price is 71% of the Active listing avg. price. Indicates price does matter.

4. Five months of inventory should indicate a sellers market but it does not seem like it as prices are still dropping. We expect more foreclosures in the next few months.

If you need more information about Alamo or when you are ready to start your Alamo home search give me a call.

Just noticed it's been a few weeks since my last blog entry. Must keep up with this stuff as it's so important to my SEO plans. So, what do I talk about today? So much going on in both my business life and the world.

Health Care just passed. Not to pleased with this bill or how it was accomplished. Seems like the majority of Americans didn't want it, at least that's what numberous polls showed. For our representatives to pass a bill this huge in this way, makes an old veteran sad when we lose a little more of our liberty. We'll see how it all turns out, it's not over yet. Upcoming elections will determine just how accepting the American people are of the party that shoved this through the bill making process.

On a lighter subject, we're working hard on our companies new web site design. I get excited about it when we make progress. Been so busy setting up our new franchises and their agents we havn't been able to spend as much time as we want to on software development. I've done this before with Real Estate Real Easy. Lots of work making sure all the bases are covered will pay off in the end.

The real estate market still seems to be caught in the head lights of a bad economy. Not moving much. I don't care what the news outlets say, we here on the front lines know what's going on. When the government subsidies expire expect the market to almost stop. Pretty soon people will expect government subsidies to be a part of the normal home buying process. Bad road to go down. Lots of bank owned properties. Still not seeing many get to market. Banks are holding off on the actual foreclosure until it's good for them. At some point they will get to market but if they let to many go at once it will have a downward pressure on prices. Best way out would be to let nature take it's course. Once homes drop to low levels there will be plenty of home buyers, as long as they have jobs.

I'm a licensed real estate broker specializing in Alamo, Danville, San Ramon, Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill. If you are in the market for a home give me a call to discuss the market conditions in these cities. There are some good buys out there. And when you are ready to perform your Alamo home search we'll find just the right home and negotiate the best possible price and terms.

Time to stop blogging and get my blog talk radio show TechCall going. Every Tuesday we discuss issues related to technology in the real estate industry.

I couldn't wait to see what the graph looked like this year as 2009 was a down year for home prices across the country. In normal markets, when interest rates are low (see history of interest rate chart below), home prices normally increase. Even at the previous historic low in 1963 rates were around 6%. Last year they averaged just under 5%. The government has kept interest rates artificially low. There is always a price to pay when the government interferes in the markets. Unintended consequences can be expected later this year and in future years.

Here are the actual percentage decreases in home prices for 2009.

Alamo (-15%), Danville (-11%), Blackhawk (-14%), San Ramon (-9%) Walnut Creek (-8%).

Are you looking for a home or property in Alamo, CA? If you are in the process, or getting ready to, start your Alamo home search, now is the time to get started. Interest rates are still at historic lows and home prices have dropped to reasonable levels compared to 1 or 2 years ago. You will of course need to qualify for a loan but if you have the down payment, good credit scores and work history it can be done.

I'll be posting my yearly "History of Home Prices" here in just a few days. In the meantime this is the current Alamo, CA housing market summary.

Active Listings= 76

(Currently for sale properties.)

Pending in last 30 days= 7

(Includes one subject to lender approval.)

Sold= 12

(Closed escrow in the last 30 days.)

Months of Inventory= 10.86

(Number of months to sell current inventory at this rate of Pending sales per month.)

Below for comparison are the numbers from July 2009, we've seen an improvement in the housing market.

132 active listings

14 Pending Sales

13.2 months of inventory

One of my laptops was lent out and the virus protection had expired so of course it got infected. A total of 56 viruses and trojans. I spent many hours researching and removing all viruses and trojans. The only error left was windows automatic update would not complete the update process. Microsoft supports their software update problems for free so I tried them. After four supports calls lasting 1+ hours each I gave up on them and figured out how to solve the problem myself. I'm amazed that they couldn't solve a problem with their own update software. 

I used 2 free programs to remove the viruses and trojans. Microsoft's MalwareBytes and HighjackThis from Trend micro. I also uninstalled Norton antivirus as that program slows down the operating system and internet usage, and they charge $80 a year for it. Once the PC was clean I installed Windows Defender and Avast Home Edition, both free programs I have used on my other PC's with great success. The PC operates much faster and Avast updates virus definitions whenever they are availble. The cleaned PC has never operated better or run faster.

The hardest trojan to remove is called Personal Guard 2009. This is an especially insidious tojan. It installs in the registry keys among other places and loads before windows operating system so it's hard to stop or eliminate. It informs you that your computer is unprotected and infected then offers to fix it for $39.95. If you take their offer, they take your money and credit card info but nothing will change, the trojan is still there. Thank god the person that borrowed the PC didn't take the offer.

There are a couple simple ways to protect your computer from viruses and trojans. Always have the IE status bar active. It can be found in the IE View menu. In the status bar at the bottom of your browser, when you roll over a link, it displays the actual website URL. If it doesn't match the site URL you expect don't click on it. It's easy to create a link that displays whatever text you want it to and hide the actual url.

Always read the text on any image with a link on it offering a product of any kind. A lot of the images look just like a Windows or other reliabe virus software company. Many of the fakes have miss-spell words. If it doesn't look right, or a trusted site, don't click on it.

Always keep virus updates current, use a good virus detection program like Avast and Windows Defender. It updates automatically when you connect to the internet. Keep windows updates current.

If your PC does become infected, don't try to clean it yourself unless you know what you're doing. You can do a lot of damage to an operating system or installed programs if you delete the wrong files or dlls.

I'm a real estate broker with lots of experience working with buyers and sellers. I've also been involved with computers, programming and software development since 1982. Even with that much experience I still learn something when a problem like this presents itself. Don't know why, but I like the challenge PC's offer, it's much like a puzzle or chess game.

Area Pro Realty provides the technology and tools to help our agents sell more real estate. We are a vitual real estate company so we must utilize technology ourselves to keep agents informed and trained. One of the ways we do that, a weekly live internet radio show called Techcall. If you have knowledge in a real estate related subject and are interested in being a guest speaker on TechCall give us a call (925) 798-2720. Guests can call in from a remote location.

Shows are recorded and archived so you can listen at any time. Click on the play button in the Player below to listen to the latest shows.