Some Positive Thinking about Current Housing Market

"Stay on Top Tomorrow with Today's Top Trends"

NAR CONVENTION PRESENTER: Bernice L. Ross, The Real Estate Coach, Austin, TX http://realestatecoach.com/

Bernice Ross presented 17 trends and opportunities to grow your business in 2008 through improved personal communication skills, implementing the latest technological trends, and capitalizing on the transparency (once proprietary information is now available to all on the internet) and immediacy trends by giving your clients the with the information they want and need in real time.

Since her notes are copyrighted, you will have to contact her or purchase the MP3 at http://www.iplaybacknar.com/. 

A highlight of her presentation was her positive attitude toward the state of real estate today. Passionately believes that we need to focus on the positive statistics about the American housing market:

• 35% of homes in the United States have no mortgage
• 94.88% of mortgage loans are performing
• Only 3.3% of home owners have any type of problem
• Just 1 in 196 are facing foreclosure
• Foreclosures are up in only 7 states this year; they are down in 43
• 2007 will be the 5^th best year for housing sales EVER!
• There is a tsunami of first time homebuyers anxious to get into the market.

It was nice to hear some positive stats. You can sign up for Bernice's free "Positive News for Positive Realtors" audio program at http://www.listenandlearnrealestate.com/.

During the course of her presentation, she made reference to numerous websites that might be helpful to us. Many of these are cutting edge marketing tools.

• http://linkedin.com/ and http://eons.com/ (the MySpace for Boomers)
• http://point2agent.com/ (to get your website on over 20 sites for free)
• http://uniqueglobalestates.com/
• http://homegain.com/
• http://trulia.com/
• http://vflyer.com/
• http://realping.com/
• http://craigslist.com/ (put your listings here)
• http://propertyshack.com/
• http://intelius.com/
• http://zabasearch.com/
• http://bestagentbusiness.com/
• http://spotrunner.com/ (to produce a TV commercial)
• http://turnhere.com/ or http://inmanstories.com/ (to produce a web movies)

We left this session feeling more positive about the state of real estate, but somewhat overwhelmed by the scope and rapid pace of the technological change impacting the market.