Kermit Was Wrong - 05/29/08 07:44 AM
"It's not easy being green..."
I think Kermit may have missed it.  It seems that it IS easy being green, and it's profitable too, so I hear.  NAR has focused on green housing boom, and many brokerages (and agents) are pursuing the Eco-Broker designation. 
More and more agents are utilizing the "mobile agent" approach - no longer tied to a physical office.  Consumers are looking for more energy-efficient housing.  Global climate change has become an important political factor.  So here are my questions for the group:
What demand have you seen in your business for eco-friendly agents/brokerages? 
Have you (brokers and … (5 comments)

Quality over Quantity - 05/28/08 07:45 AM
I've been reading a lot of posts on lead generation.  Everyone wants to know what works best: bumper stickers, calendar magnets, car magnets, farming, networking, classifieds, ...  The list goes on and on.  While it is true that this is a lead generation business, we need to take a minute and determine the quality of leads that we are generating.  In general terms, leads can be "scored" using the following:
Are they qualified?  This can mean both financially.  If they can't afford it,  we aren't going to go look at the house.  Period.  Yes, I discriminate against the poor.  Being poor … (3 comments)

What's Right in Real Estate - a Different Perspective - 05/21/08 11:12 AM
Every day we're bombarded with more "bad" news about the mortgage industry:  "Foreclosures up 27% ..." and so forth.  The problem I see is one of perspective.  Did you know that 99.5% of the mortgages in the Houston area are performing?  99.5%!  Since when is a foreclosure rate of 0.5% a crisis?!  Even Indianoplis, reported by RealtyTrac as having the highest foreclosure rate, reports a 98.55% acceptable performance on mortgages (a foreclosure rate of 1.45%).  To me, it seems worth mentioning that over 98.5% of all mortgages, nationwide, are WORKING!
I guess it really is a matter of perspective.  It's the … (0 comments)

Be Careful Who You Listen To - 05/14/08 09:48 AM
Well, they've done it again. Another "front-line" news story reports that there is a major slump in housing sales. The problem is that ALL real estate markets are local -- there is no such thing as the "national" sales figures. It makes about as much sense as talking about national zoning ordinances. In my opinion, the media hype about the crisis in the market only exacerbate the problems. People in areas not strongly affected (such as Houston and/or the luxury home market) see the headlines and panic. It's a lot like Chicken Little - "The sky is falling!"  While we have … (2 comments)

The Woodlands Luxury Market Update 05/14/08 - 05/14/08 08:41 AM
Here are the latest numbers about The Woodlands single-family luxury home market, with numbers and statistics pulled from the Houston Association of Realtors MLS (my own research):
For homes priced between $500,000 and $750,000: average days on market was 78, and we currently have about 3.6 months of inventory (29 homes active, 8 sold in the last month).  Average time on market for homes sold in the past six months was 73 days.
For homes priced between $750,000 and $1,000,000: average days on market for active listings was 107, and we currently have 16 homes available.  Only 1 has sold in the last … (1 comments)

What it means to "Get It" - 05/13/08 09:56 PM
As a fairly recent franchisee of Real Living, I was asked, "Why Real Living?" at Momentum (our annual convention) this past weekend.  Of course I started with the predictable answers of the technology we offer our agents and the agent-centric culture, but it is FAR more than that.
So many real estate companies focus on numbers that don't really mean anything.  The one I was with previously (as a Broker Associate, not as the Broker) really focused on recruiting and the number of agents in an office.  When asked why, the response was always the same: "We recruit a lot because … (5 comments)

 

John Branch

The Woodlands, TX

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