Why your offspring will thank you later

By Robert J. Bruss Inman News

DEAR BOB: I own some land purchased in 1943 for $50,000. It is now worth about $600,000. How can I sell it and keep federal and state taxes to a minimum? I have three adult children and two grandchildren. --Sabena M.

DEAR SABENA: There is only one way to fully avoid tax on the sale of property held for investment, such as your land. That method is an Internal Revenue Code 1031 tax-deferred exchange for another investment or business property of equal or greater cost and equity.

For example, you could trade for one or more rental houses, office building, apartment building, warehouse, shopping center or land. But you cannot make an IRC 1031 trade for a personal residence.

Another alternative would be to make an installment sale to spread out your capital gain tax over as many years as you wish. That means you would receive a cash down payment from the buyer, perhaps 10 percent to 25 percent, and carry back an installment-sale mortgage for the balance of the sales price.

There are many installment-sale advantages, such as creating retirement income for you. Part of each principal payment will be taxed as long-term capital gain and, of course, the interest income is taxed as ordinary income.

If you want to provide for your children and grandchildren, you can specify in your will or living trust they are to receive the installment-sale mortgage after you die. Every time they receive a monthly payment from the land buyer they will silently say "thank you." For details on tax-deferred-exchange and installment-sale benefits, please consult your tax adviser.

DOES MORTGAGE LENDER GET THE HOUSE WHEN BORROWER DIES?

DEAR BOB: If a homeowner dies before the mortgage is paid off and if there is no insurance money to pay off the mortgage, does the house go to the mortgage company? What happens to the equity? --Paula T.

DEAR PAULA: When a homeowner dies, the property title passes according to the terms of the deceased's written will or revocable living trust. That heir then usually either takes over the existing mortgage payments or sells the property and pays the mortgage in full.

In other words, the heir benefits from the remaining equity. The mortgage lender does not own the house after the owner dies. The lender is entitled only to the amount of the mortgage balance.

Of course, if the mortgage payments are not kept current by the estate or the heir, then the lender could foreclose for nonpayment. For further details, please consult a local real estate attorney.

NO NEED TO UPDATE OWNER'S TITLE INSURANCE POLICY

DEAR BOB: I am confused about our original owner's title insurance policy. We paid off our home mortgage in full after owning the house for about 18 years. Do we need to have a new updated title insurance policy issued to us to be sure there are no title clouds after we purchased the property? What if the original title insurance company is no longer in business? --Don M.

DEAR DON: There is usually no need to update your owner's title insurance policy after paying off your mortgage in full. However, as a courtesy to you as a customer, many title insurance companies will check your title to be certain the mortgage lender properly recorded either a satisfaction of mortgage or a deed of reconveyance.

If your original title insurance company has gone out of business, chances are it merged with another title insurer. Your state insurance commissioner's office can usually tell you the title insurer that is now responsible for your owner's title policy, which will be in effect as long as you or your heirs own the property.

A second resource is the American Land Title Association in Washington, D.C. They can usually refer you to the title insurer that took over the insurance obligation on your existing owner's title insurance policy.

go to www.LagretRealEstate.com

5 remodeling projects under $10,000

You don't have to add a room. Simple things like windows and landscaping may give you more bang for your buck.

By Alex Markels, U.S. News & World Report

So you've decided not to trade up after all. Even more, you don't want to dump a lot of money into fixing up your house if its value -- and your equity -- are likely to be flat or even falling in the next few years.

That said, you can still add to your home's resale value (and your happiness) with a budget-minded remodeling project. True, of the top 10 projects for increasing your home's value for the dollars spent, "there's really only two or three that you can do for under $10,000," says Sal Alfano, editorial director at Remodeling magazine, whose annual "Cost Versus Value" report ranks the projects with the biggest payback.

But while adding a bathroom (about $30,000), a sunroom ($50,000) or a master bedroom suite ($95,000 and up) will return about 70 cents for every dollar invested, Alfano's latest analysis finds that you may get more bang for your buck with lower-cost improvements, such as replacing the windows ($10,000), siding ($9,000), or the kitchen cabinets and appliances ($17,000), which will yield some 88 cents on the dollar.

Of course, you might not get quite as much enjoyment out of new vinyl siding as you would from, say, a new bathroom with a sunken tub and Jacuzzi jets. "But you'll increase your curb appeal and lower your maintenance," says Alfano, "which will definitely add to your happiness."

Here are five remodeling projects, each of which can be completed for about $10,000, and all of which can help make you feel better about staying put:

A basic bathroom makeover

Unlike adding a bathroom, which between plumbing and all the rest runs $30,000 and up, a basic makeover can be done for a third of the cost and offer more bang for the buck, especially if you have two bathrooms (which is considered about average for a three-bedroom home).

Start by upgrading your old toilet to a low-flow model. Then add new tile, such as glass varieties that can give the illusion of depth in a small space. (Ideas and examples are at www.hakatai.com.) Starting at about $5 a square foot, these popular tiles can also be used to accent lower-cost ceramic tiles.

"Maybe the bulk of the room is just plain ceramic vanilla, but then you splurge on metallic blue glass for the border and it creates a stunning effect for not much money," says Alfano.

A deck is a simple way to add space

Adding an outdoor deck is perhaps the most affordable way to expand your home's footprint, and it's an especially good idea if you need to keep up with the Joneses.

"If everyone else in the neighborhood has one, it's probably a good investment to have one too," says Alfano.

Thanks to weatherproof composite materials that have largely replaced traditional redwood decking, the days of warped timbers and messy annual coats of sealant are long gone. That said, decks made from the most popular composites -- like plastic-and-wood Trex -- typically cost more than wood (about $14,000 for a 16-by-20-foot finished deck). By simply cutting back on square footage, you can easily stay under $10,000.

"Just make sure it's bigger than your average stoop (about 6 by 8 feet)," says Alfano. "Then you at least have enough room for a barbecue and a couple of lounge chairs."

A garden fit for a queen

Landscaping is perhaps the cheapest, most underrated way to improve a home's curb appeal. But instead of simply resodding a weed-infested yard, consider planting an English garden of flowers, trees and stone (you'll find design ideas at www.englishgarden.co.uk).

Or, if you live in an arid climate, try ornamenting your yard with desert plants, which can reduce water consumption by 60% (see examples at www.xeriscape.org).

Do-it-yourselfers can usually install a medium-size garden in a weekend or two, and the impact is almost as immediate. "For one thing, you won't have to mow the lawn the next weekend," says Alfano.

New windows will brighten your outlook

It's amazing what new windows can do for your perspective and for your home's curb appeal. In recent years, vinyl models have dramatically improved in quality while falling in price. Although they come in only a few basic colors -- mostly white, black and beige -- they never need repainting, and their double- and even triple-pane glass makes them vastly more efficient than older windows, especially those framed in poorly insulating aluminum.

Window replacements can be done in stages. But Alfano of Remodeling magazine suggests doing at least 10 at a time, which installers can usually complete in a day.

Even better, if you install Energy Star-rated models in 2007 (examples at www.efficientwindows.org), you can take advantage of a $500 federal tax credit that will nearly cover the cost of the first two windows.

Sprucing up your kitchen

A kitchen remodel for under $10,000? It's doable if you head for the nearest Ikea megastore, where a set of 18 replacement cabinets will run you about $4,000 and up. Add $3,000 for installation and about $1,500 for new Formica countertops, and you'll transform your kitchen for about the cost of a fancy Sub-Zero refrigerator.

Another option is to reface your existing cabinets, leaving shelves in place but laminating exposed surfaces and replacing the doors, which can cost about a third as much as new cabinets but yield much the same result.

If you're content with your cabinets, consider investing your money in new high-efficiency appliances (you can find a list of top-rated models at www.greenerchoices.org). Alfano says that will both improve your home's marketability and reduce your electric bill.

Go to www.LagretRealEstate.com

Neighbors get to know each other as Internet goes local

StreetAdvisor, Outside.in offer content that connects via places


By Jessica Swesey Inman News

How many people's names do you know who live within walking distance of your house? If you're like many Americans today, the answer is probably not many.

No one knows neighborhoods and streets like the people who live there, and people who live near each other have a lot in common when it comes to local issues like parking, water lines and local crime.

That's the thinking behind new online networks and RSS aggregation sites that aim to connect people who live near each other.

The Web is getting more serious about local content generated by people at the street level for those who live nearby. A new site called StreetAdvisor.com launched today, joining a wave of other locally focused, user-generated sites -- including Outside.in -- that are trying to get at the fabric of local stories.

StreetAdvisor

StreetAdvisor bills itself as "an entirely new kind of online real estate community powered by crowd-sourced reviews."

The site includes street-level data in communities across 26 countries and has a place for locals to review and rank the streets where they live, have lived or have visited. The site then generates a StreetScore city ranking, which considers ratings in various categories and factors including neighborly spirit, nightlife, cell phone reception, traffic, cost of living, public transportation and many others.

Users can give first-hand reviews of streets. One reviewer, for instance, says of his street in Palo Alto, Calif.: "We moved here about 1 1/2 years ago, and so far we absolutely love it. The neighbors are friendly, the houses are charming and unique, there's a great sense of pride and sincerity -- all the class and charm of Palo Alto, without the snobs."

Site visitors also get an at-a-glance look at important details like nearby post offices, nearby drug stories, dry cleaning, and other things.

Co-founders Jason and Adam Spencer said they wanted to make available the local information that potential home buyers and current residents care about.

"Before StreetAdvisor.com, home buyers and renters were making important decisions based on the word of agents and landlords. We use the wisdom of crowds to help people share in firsthand experiences in order to make life-enhancing decisions, before they move in," said Adam Spencer, co-founder and CEO.

This site also includes a message board area where people can communicate with neighbors or contribute information on local services. Users also can upload video taken on their street, from house parties to a Sunday walk in the local park.

Outside.in

Another locally focused Web service, Outside.in., which officially launched earlier this year, has a much different model and doesn't target neighborhood reviews, but it similarly gathers content based on geographic location and presents it in a relevant, locally focused way.

The company tracks more than 3,000 neighborhoods across 62 cities so that users can enter a neighborhood or ZIP code and see stories, people and places associated with that area. The site content is organized around RSS feeds submitted from blogs. Users then see headlines from local blogs and click through to those blogs to read the full entry.

John Geraci, president and co-creator, said that Outside.in is now delving into more social networking features that would allow users to chat with each other about local issues like car break-ins or hot new restaurants.

Geraci said the site offers to take the pain out of unraveling the blogging scene. Many isolated blog entries about one topic can become more meaningful when strung together with others' blog entries on the same local issue.

He points to a recent example in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, in which officials were talking about making all the avenues one-way streets and every local blogger started blogging about it.

"Each blog entry is really an isolated entry," he said. "But Outside.in connects the dots and gives each story a local context."

The long-term strategy behind many locally focused sites is that this type of rich and relevant content will translate into a highly targeted place for small local businesses to connect with consumers. Geraci points out that online advertising today is mostly geo-targeted, but there are strict limitations on geo-targeting that end up ruling out a lot. For instance, advertisers can geo-target by city, but not by streets or neighborhoods.

"Local businesses haven't really had a game in advertising on the Web yet -- that's what we think that Outside.in will really address," he said.

Investors clearly agree, as the company in February announced its first significant round of financing from backers including Union Square Ventures, and Internet luminaries Marc Andreessen, John Seely Brown and Esther Dyson. Additional financing came from Milestone Venture Partners, Village Ventures, and angel investors George Crowley, John Borthwick and Richard Smith.

"We have learned that the best Web services are two-way systems," Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures said when the financing was announced. "They take content in, add something to it, and then send it back out. YouTube works this way. So do Delicious and Flickr. To date, we haven't seen such a service for local information online. Outside.in will hopefully fill that void and we are excited to be involved."

Outside.in plans to roll out a site redesign next week, Geraci said.

The site co-creator thinks that the whole notion of "place blogging" that Outside.in embraces is going to catch on even more. "We managed to surf out in front of a really big wave that's about to break," he said.

go to www.Lagretrealestate.com

Another benefit to home-seller financing

By Tom Kelly Inman News

Some homes take longer to sell than others, adding anxiety to sellers who absolutely have to get a transaction closed within a specific period of time. And, when it rains, it pours.

For example, I recently got a call from a former college classmate who had taken a new job in a different state. After his home sat on the market for months, he finally struck a deal with a potential buyer. For weeks the deal appeared to be headed to closing, and the seller, feeling confident with the buyer's borrowing power, had even made a down payment on another home. The seller became upset, however, when the buyer walked away from the deal because the buyer would not agree to a "soft prepay" loan provision offered by a national lender.

A "soft prepayment penalty" or "soft prepay" loan is a requirement some lenders now are demanding to help curtail borrowers from quickly refinancing their loans as soon as interest rates drop. The "soft" limitation allows the borrower to prepay the loan without penalty only if the home is sold. However, if the loan is refinanced during a specific period of time, typically three to five years, the borrower faces a prepayment penalty that could amount to thousands of dollars.

If you have a home that's been sitting on the market and you truly need to sell and move on, you could include in your advertising materials that you would be willing to offer seller financing for a specific period of time provided you receive a sizeable down payment. The down payment would supply you the cash to get into your new home, and the monthly payments made by the buyer could offset the payments of your new home. You also get to better gauge your moving time, and the buyer avoids loan costs.

"Carrying back" all or a portion of the proceeds can make a lot of sense. Most of the time, seller financing works well for both sides, but both sides -- especially the seller -- should be prepared to handle the deal much like a small business. While the buyer can simply mail you a check every month, it's up to you to craft the ground rules.

If you participate in any sort of seller financing, make sure to build in safety features that protect your investment and sanity. In fact, it's not a bad idea to copy many of the loan requirements a local bank would insist upon -- especially if you will be out of the country most of the year.

Here are some seller-financing tips to consider:


Consider a third-party collection account. You can split the cost with the buyer, and the service is well worth the money. It provides you with complete tax statements (seller must submit principal and interest amounts to the buyer-payer annually). The account receives and deposits monthly payments -- especially valuable if you have to go out of town unexpectedly.


Write into the earnest money agreement that the buyer provides and keeps current a homeowner's insurance policy.


Purchase tax registration coverage from a title company. That way, if the property taxes are not paid, you will be notified. Include in the earnest money that the buyer make timely tax payments.


Insist on a "due-on-sale" clause or that you, as the initial seller, must approve any subsequent sale in writing. That way, if the property is sold before the term of your note or contract, you will receive all your cash upon the transfer of the property, or retain the ability to approve the new buyer.


It's a good idea to obtain a credit report on the buyer. Why would you want to sell your home or other property to someone you know nothing about?


If you absolutely cannot be cashed out early (say you need monthly income or do not want to pay taxes on the lump-sum gain) request your own prepayment penalty. That way, if you receive a huge balloon payment when you don't necessarily want it, you will be reimbursed for the inconvenience (tax consequences, loss of reliable income, etc.)


Consider taking a down payment of at least 20 percent. If you need to sell the note before term (illness or other emergency) this will make it easier to sell. Like regular mortgages, lenders require mortgage insurance for loans they write with less than 20 percent down. You will reduce the risk of any future note holder by having an amount at least equal to a conventional down payment.

Seller financing is not for everyone. But not everyone is faced with the deadline of 30 days to be in a new job in a different state.

Go to www.LagretRealEstate.com

Invest Millions In Russian Real Estate

By Liam Pleven
From The Wall Street Journal Online

An investment vehicle controlled by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group Inc., has created a subsidiary to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian real estate, according to people familiar with the plans.

Starr Investments Russia will focus on prime office space, residential housing and hotels, initially in Moscow, and will invest in both developed properties and land. Starr has hired people who used to work for AIG in Russia to staff the operation, according to these people. AIG declined to comment.

The unit is being established by Starr International Co., whose chairman, Mr. Greenberg, left AIG in 2005 amid a probe of the insurance giant's accounting. AIG subsequently agreed to pay $1.64 billion in a settlement with authorities.

The value of Moscow real estate has soared in recent years as an economic boom has fueled a surge in demand that has overwhelmed the limited supply of modern facilities. Moscow's skyline is a forest of cranes as developers scramble to keep up, and their projects are transforming the city.

Western investors have been eager participants in the Russian stock market, one of the world's best performers in recent years. Until recently, real estate has attracted fewer big foreign participants amid concerns about murky ownership structures and questions about whether Russia's weak legal system would be able to protect property rights. But as major foreign companies have flooded into Russia in recent years, demand for quality office space has continued to grow.

One person said Starr is "comfortable" with the political circumstances in Russia. Mr. Greenberg wasn't available for comment.

Mr. Greenberg, 81 years old, has extensive experience working in emerging markets. While at AIG, he established a network of contacts in China that laid the groundwork for the company to expand there in recent years.

Go back to www.LagretRealEstate.com

Real estate listings for free

I've complied a list of websites you can post your real estate listings on for free. Some are probably familiar to you while others may not be. It also works well at listing appointments to rattle off many sites that their home will be listed at. If anyone knows of others I would love to hear about them.

http://www.craigslist.com/ (A personal favorite, I get responses on ads fairly frequent)

http://www.zillow.com/

http://www.findmyroof.com/

http://www.postlets.com/

http://epage.com/

http://www.houselist.com/

http://www.land.net/

http://base.google.com/base

http://www.LagretREalEstate.com

Automatted posting to GoogleBase, Trulia, Propsmart, Oodle, Vast and others,
our standard account at NReal.com Agents Listing Network is free.

Backpage.com

CityCribs

olx.com

25 TIPS for selling your home

Stephen Luckett-Fairfax Realty

Through these 25 tips you will discover how to protect and capitalize on your most important investment, reduce stress, be in control of your situation, and make the most profit possible.

1. Understand Why You Are Selling Your Home

Your motivation to sell is the determining factor as to how you will approach the process. It affects everything from what you set your asking price at to how much time, money and effort you're willing to invest in order to prepare your home for sale. For example, if your goal is for a quick sale, this would determine one approach. If you want to maximize your profit, the sales process might take longer thus determining a different approach.

2. Keep the Reason(s) You are Selling to Yourself

The reason(s) you are selling your home will affect the way you negotiate its sale. By keeping this to yourself you don't provide ammunition to your prospective buyers. For example, should they learn that you must move quickly, you could be placed at a disadvantage in the negotiation process. When asked, simply say that your housing needs have changed. Remember, the reason( s) you are selling is only for you to know.

3. Setting Your Home's Sale Price

This is probably the most important step in selling your home-ineffective pricing could mean your house sits on the market while other comparable homes around you are sold more quickly. Seek professional advice if you are not planning to use a competent Realtor®

If You Decide to Sell On Your Own - A good way to establish a value is to look at homes that have sold in your neighborhood within the past 6 months, including those now on the market. This is how prospective buyers will assess the worth of your home. Also a trip to City Hall can provide you with home sale information in its public records, for most communities. Selling your home yourself opens you up to many litigious situations, so be sure that you fully understand what will be expected of you and the contract process.

4. Do Some "Home Shopping" Yourself

The best way to learn about your competition and discover what turns buyers off is to check out other open houses. Note floor plans, condition, appearance, size of lot, location and other features. Particularly note, not only the asking prices but what they are actually selling for. Remember, if you're serious about getting your home sold fast, don't price it higher than your neighbor's.

5. Tax Assessments - What They Really Mean

Some people think that tax assessments are a way of evaluating a home. The difficulty here is that assessments are based on a number of criteria that may not be related to property values, so they may not necessarily reflect your home's true value.

6. Deciding Upon a Realtor®

According to the National Association of Realtors, nearly two-thirds of the people surveyed who sell their own homes say they wouldn't do it again themselves. Primary reasons included setting a price, marketing handicaps, liability concerns, and time constraints. When deciding upon a Realtor® , consider two or three. Be as wary of quotes that are too low as those that are too high.

All Realtors® are not the same! A professional Realtor® knows the market and has information on past sales, current listings, a marketing plan, and will provide their background and references. Evaluate each candidate carefully on the basis of their experience, qualifications, enthusiasm and personality. Be sure you choose someone that you trust and feel confident that they will do a good job on your behalf.

When selling your home be sure that your Realtor® is very aggressive with their marketing campaign.

If you choose to sell on your own, you can still talk to a Realtor®. Many are more than willing to help do-it-your-selfers with paperwork, contracts, etc. and should problems arise, you now have someone you can readily call upon.

7. Ensure You Have Room to Negotiate

Before settling on your asking price make sure you leave yourself enough room in which to bargain. For example, set your lowest and highest selling price. Then check your priorities to know if you'll price high to maximize your profit or price closer to market value if you want to sell quickly.

8. Appearances Do Matter - Make them Count!

Appearance is so critical that it would be unwise to ignore this when selling your home. The look and "feel" of your home will generate a greater emotional response than any other factor. Prospective buyers react to what they see, hear, feel, and smell even though you may have priced your home to sell.

9. Invite the Honest Opinions of Others

The biggest mistake you can make at this point is to rely solely on your own judgment. Don't be shy about seeking the honest opinions of others. You need to be objective about your home's good points as well as bad. Fortunately, your Realtor® will be unabashed about discussing what should be done to make your home more marketable.

10. Get it Spic n' Span Clean and Fix Everything, Even If It Seems Insignificant

Scrub, scour, tidy up, straighten, get rid of the clutter, declare war on dust, repair squeaks, the light switch that doesn't work, and the tiny crack in the bathroom mirror because these can be deal-killers and you'll never know what turns buyers off. Remember, you're not just competing with other resale homes, but brand-new ones as well.

11. Allow Prospective Buyers to Visualize Themselves in Your Home

The last thing you want prospective buyers to feel when viewing your home is that they may be intruding into someone's life. Avoid clutter such as too many knick-knacks, etc. Decorate in neutral colors, like white or beige and place a few carefully chosen items to add warmth and character. You can enhance the attractiveness of your home with a well-placed vase of flowers or potpourri in the bathroom. Home-decor magazines are great for tips.

12. Deal Killer Odors - Must Go!

You may not realize but odd smells like traces of food, pets and smoking odors can kill deals quickly. If prospective buyers know you have a dog, or that you smoke, they'll start being aware of odors and seeing stains that may not even exist. Don't leave any clues.

13. Be a Smart Seller - Disclose Everything

Smart sellers are proactive in disclosing all known defects to their buyers in writing. This can reduce liability and prevent lawsuits later on. Be sure to use the approved Maryland State & County Forms.

14. It's Better With More Prospects

When you maximize your home's marketability, you will most likely attract more than one prospective buyer. It is much better to have several buyers because they will compete with each other; a single buyer will end up competing with you.

15. Keep Emotions in Check During Negotiations

Let go of the emotion you've invested in your home. Be detached, using a business-like manner in your negotiations. You'll definitely have an advantage over those who get caught up emotionally in the situation. This is one key area where your Realtor can be most effective, as they will remain emotionally unaffected during the negotiation process.

16. Learn Why Your Buyer is Motivated

The better you know your buyers the better you can use the negotiation process to your advantage. This allows you to control the pace and duration of the process.

As a rule, buyers are looking to purchase the best affordable property for the least amount of money. Knowing what motivates them enables you to negotiate more effectively. For example, does your buyer need to move quickly. Armed with this information you are in a better position to bargain.

17. What the Buyer Can Really Pay

As soon as possible, try to learn the amount of mortgage the buyer is qualified to carry and how much his/her down payment is. If their offer is low, ask their Realtor® about the buyer's ability to pay what your home is worth.

18. When the Buyer Would Like to Close

Quite often, when buyers would "like" to close is when they need to close. Knowledge of their deadlines for completing negotiations again creates a negotiating advantage for you.

19. Never Sign a Deal on Your Next Home Until You Sell Your Current Home

Beware of closing on your new home while you're still making mortgage payments on the old one or you might end up becoming a seller who is eager (even desperate) for the first deal that comes along.

20. Moving Out Before You Sell Can Put You at a Disadvantage

It has been proven that it's more difficult to sell a home that is vacant because it becomes forlorn looking, forgotten, no longer an appealing sight. Buyers start getting the message that you have a another home and are probably motivated to sell. This could cost you thousands of dollars.

21. A Low Offer - Don't Take It Personally

Invariably the initial offer is below what both you and the buyer knows he'll pay for your property. Don't be upset, evaluate the offer objectively. Ensure it spells out the offering price, sufficient deposit, amount of down payment, mortgage amount, a closing date and any special requests. This can simply provide a starting point from which you can negotiate.

22. Turn That Low Offer Around

You can counter a low offer or even an offer that's just under your asking price. This lets the buyer know that the first offer isn't seen as being a serious one. Now you'll be negotiating only with buyers with serious offers.

23. Maybe the Buyer's Not Qualified

If you feel an offer is inadequate, now is the time to make sure the buyer is qualified to carry the size of mortgage the deal requires. Inquire how they arrived at their figure, and suggest they compare your price to the prices of homes for sale in your neighborhood. Is the buyer a first time buyer? Make sure you know your added responsibilites to the first time home buyer.

24. Ensure the Contract is Complete

To avoid problems, ensure that all terms, costs and responsibilities are spelled out in the contract of sale. It should include such items as the date it was made, names of parties involved, address of property being sold, purchase price, where deposit monies will be held, date for loan approval, date and place of closing, type of deed, including any contingencies that remain to be settled and what personal property is included (or not) in the sale. Maryland does have a standard Real Estate contract that should be used if the services of an attorney are not utilized.

25. Resist Deviating From the Contract

For example, if the buyer requests a move-in prior to closing, just say no and that you've been advised against it. Now is not the time to take any chances of the deal falling through. Any deviation on your part from the contract can leave you open to serious litigation that will consume your time and money.

I hope that these 25 points have helped to steer you in the right direction to maximize your profits and reduce your time spent selling your home. If you are thinking of selling in Baltimore County, call me! I live to serve and would enjoy assisting you in the sale of your home.

Why would someone use a new Agent?

Here are my reasons:

A new/Good Agent is so afraid of making a mistake, they will go above and beyond what is necessary.
A new/Good Agent will spend a lot more time on each prospective buyer or seller
A new/Good Agent is not "jaded" and will come to each transaction with an open mind
A new/Good Agent knows he/she has to produce and will try harder
A new/Good Agent will pay attention to everything that is going on in the Real Estate world
A new/Good Agent can be as knowledgeable simply through life experience, education, family ties, etc.

www.LagretRealEstate.com


"Is there a trick to determining when a seller is just wasting your time...?"

Very simple. Start doing a a 2-step listing approach. The first appointment is merely to preview their property with one of the owners and make a few measurements so that you can more accurately do your CMA for them - (and that is what you tell them to get this preview appointment). "Gee, Mr. Johnson... in order to do a professional market analysis for you, I would like to stop by sometime in the daylight to preview both the inside and the outside of your property with you. This should only take about 15 minutes or so. Would this afternoon at 4 or 4:30 be more convenient?"

Only take a legal pad notebook and your tape measure - no brochures or listing materials at all. This is NOT The Listing Presentation, so don't get trapped into giving one! You are merely there to preview the house. You shouldn't be there for more than about 15-20 minutes. In actuality, you are there to see the house, measure it up, note all of it's features and begin to start filling out your listing agreement in advance of the 2nd appointment - the real listing presentation.

Now there are several key question to ask at this "preview" visit as you are walking through the property with one of the owners. Try to make these part of the overall conversation, and not a "grilling" of the owner on the spot.


1. "Gee, have you folks ever sold a home before?" (If yes, go to #2)

2. "Did you do it yourself or did you use a professional?" (If yes, they used a professional, go to #3)

3. "Did you run into any difficulties?" (This will help you write your script for your listing presentation where you show you will be different than the last agent they used who goofed up.)


4. "You know, you've done such a lovely job with your home, why would you ever consider moving?" (To find out motivation)

5. "How do you feel about making this move?" (You are not just listing houses. You are listing people! So understand what is behind the "move". Is it a happy one - moving back to where they came from or wanting to move up to something nicer? Is it an unhappy one - a divorce, an unexpected transfer to a city they don't care about?)

6. "Do you have some idea of what you would like to ask for your property?" (Now, don't faint when they answer and try to stay as straight faced as possible. That is one reason why I don't research the property before going, so that my body language doesn't give me away when they answer. I don't want to be thinking, "You have to be out of your minds!" Ha!)

7. "Now I have some considerable research to do to perform a CMA for you. It should take me several hours... so when should I come back to show my market analysis to you and your spouse? (They both have to be there - it takes both of them to sign the listing and you are going to get it!) Would tomorrow evening or the next evening be better? 7 or 7:30?" So now make your appointment for the actual listing presentation before you leave.

If the seller tries to trap you into giving your listing presentation right there on the spot, DON'T! Don't talk about brokerage fees or how you market a property or anything at all. Just look at your watch and say, "Gee, I would love to go into that fully with you, but I have another appointment. I'll be happy to cover all of that with you when I come back with my market analysis tomorrow evening. We can have an open-ended discussion at that time where I'll be happy to answer all of your questions. How does that sound?" And now Beat It!

The advantage to you of this 2-step approach -

1. You have now previewed the property and seen it's overall condition and features so that you can accurately compare it to the comparables in your CMA. No surprises here!

2. You have uncovered their motivation - being transferred very soon OR if someone will give them an price higher than any other seller in the neighborhood has ever gotten, they might just take it because they have been thinking about retiring out of the area - but they're in no hurry. ;-)

3. You know if you are dealing with the "professional" FSBO, who has done it before and is merely trying to pick your brain.

4. You will find that you now have much greater control over your presentations and your CMA's will be better because you know what you are really comparing.

Lastly, in doing your CMA, be sure to preview the "currents" that you use. Every seller has done a "garbage" CMA in advance of having you over... by calling on For Sale signs and Sold signs in the area. But rarely have they been inside those houses. So you must know about those properties by previewing them to successfully compare them to the sellers and to be able to tell your seller why these are better or worse than their house to accurately arrive at the right asking price. This will help keep you from over-pricing your listing.

Gee... a quick class in how to successfully list a property. Ha! Hope that helps.

Is Your Rent Too High or Too Low? Web Site Analyzes Local Rates

By Lauren Baier Kim - senior editor at RealEstateJournal.com

Tool/Web site: Rentometer.com, a Web tool that can be used by renters and landlords to measure how a property's rent stacks up against similar homes or apartments nearby. The site is a product of Investment Instruments Corporation of Newton, Mass., and is associated with iiproperty.com, a property management tool.

Function: Type in the address of a particular rental property, the number of bedrooms and the total residential units in the building, click "Analyze my Property" and the site reveals how the rent compares to other rates nearby. New to the site: searches now pull up local for-rent listings, which may include property photos and full descriptions of available rentals.


Rentometer, a tool for measuring how your rent stacks up.
How it works: Using data from listings provided by rental marketing firms and property owners/managers and listings publicly available on the Web, the site's "Rentometer" gauge provides a quick visual comparison of a property's rent to the area's rental range. Alongside, a Google map (with street, satellite and hybrid views) displays the location of the target rental unit (indicated by an orange pushpin) and comparable properties nearby (represented by green and blue pushpins).

Pluses: The site is easy to use and provides users with a quick estimate of how their rents match up against neighborhood rates. The Rentometer -- which looks like a car speedometer -- is a simple visual of how a unit's rate compares against other local rental values. A rent that falls to the left of the median on the meter is low; one to the right is pricey. Above the meter, the site spits out a paragraph summarizing whether your rent is fair, a bargain or too high. The accompanying map can be used to compare rents to comparable properties nearby -- rentals marked with plus signs have higher rents, those with negative signs have lower rates. (The map doesn't reveal the size of the rent disparities.) Renters can size up their units' amenities and costs against homes available for rent nearby. A click on a property represented by a green pushpin pulls up a Web flyer that may include a photo and information such as the size of the unit, the number of bedrooms/bathrooms, when the apartment/home is available, the term of the lease and the initial security deposit required.

Drawbacks: The Rentometer only considers a rental property's address, number of bedrooms and total units in a building when comparing rates -- so if you rent a two-bedroom penthouse in a new full-service building, your unit may be compared to dissimilar rentals -- say neighborhood basement apartments in older buildings with relatively few amenities. Rentometer's developers intentionally limited the variables -- to make it as "easy to use as possible," says Owen Johnson, president of Investment Instruments Corporation. The site has full listings for a limited sample of properties and its coverage for areas outside large metropolitan areas may be spotty. The Web site doesn't supply the exact location for all properties available for rent -- which may make actually finding those rentals (or visiting them in person) -- difficult. Exact addresses are provided only for units for which the site has complete listings available. (Clicking on blue pushpins -- properties for which the site doesn't have full information -- reveals just a unit's rate, number of bedrooms and distance from the address for which the search was completed.) Renters who are interested in finding out whether neighborhood rents are creeping up or holding steady are out of luck -- the site only offers data on current rental rates only, not past rates. Also, exact addresses are needed to use the Rentometer, so someone who isn't renting an apartment locally, but wants to check out the rents in the neighborhood, may be frustrated.

Insider tips: Last week, Rentometer added a feature that allows landlords and property managers to post their listings on the site and use iiproperty.com's free suite of online tools (more tools are available for a fee) to manage properties. Landlords/property managers who list through iiproperty.com can have their listings posted on Google Base, Craigslist, Oodle.com (a search engine for local classifieds) and edgeio.com (a Web site that aggregates and distributes listings) at no cost. Larger landlords and companies can push listings directly to the site through data feeds. Rentometer's search options may be expanded in coming months to allow visitors to search rents by neighborhood or pull up rental listings for a particular area, Mr. Johnson says.

www.LagretRealEstate.com

So you want to refinance?

Where you get your loan makes all the difference
By Robert J. Bruss Inman News

For some unexplained reason, mortgage lenders who service your current mortgage often don't want to refinance it even if you have an excellent on-time payment record. Why don't lenders want to keep their current borrowers? Only twice have I refinanced with the same lender. But it's a smart idea to start with your present lender to see what refinance terms you are offered.

ASK YOUR CURRENT LENDER ABOUT A LOAN MODIFICATION. If all you want to do is reduce the interest rate on your current mortgage, ask your current lender about a loan modification to reduce its interest rate. Personally, I've never had any luck doing this because my loans had been sold in the secondary mortgage market to other "investors," but you might be fortunate to learn your lender still owns your existing mortgage and is willing to modify its interest rate to keep you as a borrower if rates have declined.

With your current lender starting point, then you can compare other lenders you contact. I suggest contacting at least half a dozen lenders by phone. Ask friends, relatives and business associates for lender recommendations. Also, check the newspaper real estate section for current mortgage offerings. See how you are treated as a new customer. If you aren't treated well, that's probably not a good lender for you.

As a refinancing borrower you have the luxury of taking your time for mortgage shopping. I suggest phoning at least two mortgage brokers, two direct lenders and two mortgage bankers. Be sure to speak with a loan officer, not just a clerk who answers the phone.

MORTGAGE BROKERS. These folks are "middlepersons" between the actual lenders and the borrowers. They take your loan application, "package it" by obtaining your credit reports and property appraisal, and then "shop it" to one or more actual lenders. In other words, mortgage brokers get interest rate and term quotes from several actual lenders. Today, mortgage brokers arrange about 60 percent of new and refinanced home loans so they are very important loan sources to mortgage lenders.

Unfortunately, some mortgage brokers have a very bad reputation for making promises to borrowers they can't keep. I've had mortgage brokers lie to me, but without an ounce of guilt or shame. Ask how long the individual mortgage broker has been in business; if it is less than five years, watch out!

Experienced mortgage brokers can perform finance miracles. They usually deal with several dozen lenders on a regular basis and they have access to many more lenders for specialty mortgages, such as for borrowers with unusual financial situations or low FICO scores. My experience with mortgage brokers is they often "overdocument" their loan application files so the lenders don't find anything wrong or missing. This can be extremely annoying to loan applicants.

Watch out for the "yield spread premium" mortgage broker trick. Although mortgage brokers are supposed to disclose any extra compensation they receive from the actual lender, many "forget" to do so until the loan closes and the extra income to the mortgage broker shows up on the closing settlement statement. The "yield spread premium" is a bonus mortgage lenders pay to mortgage brokers for producing above-market-interest-rate loans.

EXAMPLE: Suppose the "going rate" for a fixed-rate home loan is 6 percent but a mortgage broker gets you to pay a 6.25 percent interest rate. In gratitude, the lender will "rebate" several thousand dollars to that mortgage broker for producing a higher-than-required interest rate. It is perfectly legal, but the borrower often doesn't know a lower interest rate could have been obtained either by paying a loan fee (usually called "points") to the mortgage broker or going direct to the actual lender. Be sure to ask the mortgage broker if he will be receiving any kickback or "yield spread premium" from the actual lender.

DIRECT LENDERS. These lenders loan their own funds. Examples include Washington Mutual (the nation's largest home loan direct lender), Bank of America, Chase, Wachovia, etc. Some of these lenders are very flexible because they keep many of their mortgages in their loan portfolios. But they sell most of their mortgages into the secondary mortgage market and keep the loan servicing so the borrower never knows his or her mortgage has been sold.

A big problem with direct lenders is they often don't have much variety in their mortgage offerings. "One size fits all" seems to be their motto. Many of these lenders approve mortgages in huge impersonal centralized loan centers so the person you talk with usually has zero loan-approval authority. However, with today's "automated underwriting," if you meet the initial loan qualifications you will be told within a few minutes if your application is approved, or if it must be sent on for "further evaluation" by a human (called an "underwriter").

MORTGAGE BANKERS. These are hybrid lenders because, while loaning their own (often borrowed) funds, they usually quickly resell those mortgages to a direct lender or into the secondary mortgage market. But mortgage bankers usually keep the loan servicing so the borrower doesn't know their loan has been sold to a distant lender.

The nation's largest mortgage banker is Countrywide, which has both local loan offices and a large Internet Web site at www.countrywide.com. I tried to do business a few years ago with Countrywide when I was refinancing my home loan, but I found their operation to be totally incompetent. Perhaps they have improved since then.

Another huge mortgage banker is Wells Fargo. That's right! You probably thought Wells Fargo was a bank. It is. But Wells Fargo runs its mortgage banking operation out of Des Moines, Iowa. I've found Wells Fargo to be both very bad and, lately, very good.

EXAMPLE: When I refinanced my Wells Fargo home mortgage a little over a year ago, although I live in California, I was referred to loan officer Joe Lobasco in their Las Vegas mortgage office! At first, I was very skeptical. However, he started out the phone conversation by saying, "After we successfully complete this refinancing, you will receive a survey from Wells Fargo. I expect to earn a perfect score so please let me know if at any time I don't deliver the service you expect." Joe took my "no-doc," no-hassle loan refinance application over the phone, delivered the promised 5.75 percent fixed-interest-rate jumbo mortgage with no loan-fee points and no surprise extra costs, arranged the appraisal, and the loan closed within about 30 days. I had nothing to complain about (except the bad title company I selected -- First American Title!). Needless to say, Joe earned his perfect survey score.

Nontraded Real-Estate Trusts Shed Shady Past, Boast Returns

By Thomas Kostigen From MarketWatch

Those ugly nontraded real estate investment trusts born out of the limited-partnership industry may finally be looking pretty. But who knows for how long.

On average the typical investor of these REITS has received a full return of capital plus a combined gain of 64% over five years, according to the Stanger Report, which tracks the industry.

"Until now, gauging the investment performance of the 'new generation' of publicly registered, nontraded REITS has been somewhat of a guessing game," the report notes.

Real-Estate Slowdown? No Sign of It in Sector Funds
Nontraded REITS are direct investments typically designed to garner income. They're usually partnerships where investors team to purchase an income-producing property. Sometimes the individual partnership units are sold on a secondary market, and then become "traded REIT secondary offerings." But, akin to time shares, these units are bought and sold between private parties.

In any event, valuing privately traded REIT investments has been difficult because few have gone through a full cycle of liquidation where investors buy a property, receive dividends (hopefully) and then sell the property.

The Stanger Report analyzed nontraded REITS begun since 1998, representing $11 billion, or 40%, of the nontraded REIT market.

"True, most of these programs benefit from the tailwind of declining capitalization rates and increasing real estate valuation parameters during their holding periods," it notes. "But most also operated through a period of soft real estate fundamentals following 9-11 and the tech bubble implosion. No program lost money. Internal rates of return among individual programs ranged from a high of 16.6% to a low of 7.3% without dividend reinvestment, and 18.1% to 7.4% with dividend reinvestment."

This is a far cry from the 1980s when direct real estate partnership investments such as these ravaged Wall Street and private investors, and became infamous through shady deal making at then brokerage Prudential-Bache.

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 crushed the industry because it took away many of the tax incentives associated with partnership investing at the time (by limiting deductions for passive losses).

Slowly, however, the direct partnership industry has climbed back with better deals for investors ripe for higher dividend income, better prices on liquidations and a better commercial real estate climate overall. And what has always been the bane of their existence, may now be their grace: the liquidity issue.

Tangible benefits

With the stock market dousing prices and real estate making headlines, publicly traded stock, especially in the real estate sector, is getting batted around. But the trading effect has much less of an impact on owners of tangible property. They rely on private market values. Moreover, the income derived from many of these nontraded REITS comes from tenant leases, which also aren't so much correlated with market behavior.

To be sure, if the real estate market itself tanks, there will be an effect on the sales (liquidation) price of the REITs underlying property, or properties. This could set this performance analysis on its ear. So far, so good, however.

Distributions for these partnership programs has ranged between 6% and 7% per year, accounting for one-third of investors' total return. Sales-price gains have been robust, accounting for the remaining two-thirds of the 12.5% to 13.6% average return these investments have garnered.

With the average life span of nontraded REIT program being between five and 10 years, many of these partnerships are nearing maturity. Nontraded REITS have raised more than $30 billion since 2002 compared with $17 billion in traded equity REIT IPOs, and $43 billion in traded REIT secondary offerings.

This means a raft of properties have been or are about to be sold. Depending upon at what price and when these partnerships liquidate, they could stand to make a tidy profit off the run-up in real estate prices.

And even if the real estate market continues to turn south, prices are still far about what they were five and 10 years ago. So these investors may end up sacrificing some profit, but not likely taking a loss.

Meanwhile, investors in publicly traded stock tied to the real estate sector are subject to daily swings and the sensitivity to news. This could pull their investments down, leaving them without the ground that nontraded REIT investors have to stand on.

Illiquidity is usually thought of as a bad thing in the investing world. But when markets get hammered, it isn't always that way.

See my web site: www.LagretRealEstate.com for new investment ideas

Using the Web to Find Information Your Realtor Won't Tell You

By Amy Hoak
From MarketWatch

Steve Roddel was walking through a house in Fort Wayne, Ind., when he wondered aloud if there were any sex offenders living in the neighborhood.

Instead of commenting on her own, the real estate agent showing the home quickly pulled out her cell phone, connected to its Web browser and brought up Family Watchdog, a national sex-offender registry Web site. Little did she know that she was standing with the site's founder and CEO. Visit Family Watchdog.

A real estate agent can be a wealth of information about a house. So a home buyer who asks what crime is like in the neighborhood might be surprised when the agent defers the question, directing a client to the Web or the local police instead.

Ranking the Real-Estate Agents: Clunky Site Identifies Best Bets
"The Realtor will be the one that has the most contact from beginning to end. Because of that accessibility, the consumer feels that they can give them all the information that they need," said Alex Chaparro, president of the Chicago Association of Realtors.

But there are some pieces of information that an agent simply can't speak about due to fair housing laws, including demographic statistics. And they often prefer to leave some characteristics, such as the quality of the school district or crime stats, answered by other sources.

The conservative approach is often taken in order to avoid a lawsuit popping up in response to frank neighborhood talk, said Ralph Holmen, associate general counsel of the National Association of Realtors. Agents are forbidden from giving any information that could be considered "steering," directing a client toward or away from a particular property in a discriminatory manner.

And some of this information will make or break a decision to buy. The quality of school systems, for example, has long been of importance to home-buying families. Luckily, there are a variety of sources buyers can use to get at the information on their own.

Checking on the schools

Unless a realty agent has hard data at his or her fingertips, the agent may decline to answer school-district questions. And even if they are willing to share some information, a home buyer might want to do some fact-finding -- or maybe even complete the research before deciding which neighborhoods to consider in the first place.

A national database of school demographic information can be found on the National Center for Education Statistics Web site. Click on the "School, College and Library Search" tab at the top in order to view data including a particular school's student-to-teacher ratio or enrollment by race and ethnicity. Visit the site.

For a snapshot of academic performance and to compare schools, a prospective homeowner might browse the School Matters Web site, a service of Standard & Poor's. Visit School Matters.

Another site, Great Schools, offers similar tools. Visit Great Schools.

"People who are really attracted to (School Matters) are people who are moving," said Susan Shafer, director of marketing and communications for Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services. "It's a good starting point," she said, but it still isn't a substitute for an actual tour.

Of course, some districts and state departments also post information online. It might be worthwhile to look at an individual school district's site, especially for large systems.

Crime matters

Roddel's Family Watchdog Web site allows users to enter a street address, which pulls up a map of the area that plots out where sex offenders live. Click on one of the squares that indicate an offender's home, and often an address and a photo are available to view. Information is updated at least once a day, and is culled from state registries, Roddel said.

The idea for the site came about a year an a half ago, after 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford was assaulted and killed by a convicted sex offender in Central Florida in 2005, he said.

"(Realtors) tell me that their buyers tell them where they do and don't want to look for houses based on the density of sex offenders (in the neighborhood)," Roddel said.

Roddel hopes to create another tool that will help people learn about other neighborhood crimes. In Chicago, there already is such a site: ChicagoCrime.org, which allows visitors to search for crimes by city block. Visit the site.

For now, he suggests that people scout out the neighborhood the old-fashioned way.

"Talk to the police department and see if they've got any statistics. If you're in a city that has a department of public safety, see if you can get some information," Roddel said.

Judging the environment

Another issue that comes up occasionally in a housing search is the environmental characteristics of a neighborhood, Holmen said. The association typically advises members not to make judgment calls on the health of an area, and to leave that to experts.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site has a tool that allows visitors to search a community by ZIP code for environmental facts about the area, including pollution statistics, the location of hazardous waste sites and information about the area's watershed. Visit the site.

Another site dedicated to helping the public retrieve information about local environmental health is Scorecard.org, which generates a pollution report card at the county level, giving information on such topics as air and water quality. Visit the site.
Learning the demographics

If agents don't shy away from any other question, they most likely will when it comes to those regarding demographics -- and for good reason. Fair housing laws forbid issues of race or ethnicity to be a consideration in the minds of real estate agents, who mustn't steer a client toward or away from a particular area based on the neighborhood's makeup.

When Anne Kennedy, a Realtor in Austin, Texas, turns down a question about neighborhood demographics, clients "completely understand," she said. She suggests searching the Census Web site for statistics about an area's demographics; the Census' Quick Facts page breaks down the information easily, by city and county. Visit the site.

"That would also show general socioeconomic data, too," she said.

Walking the neighborhood

Finally, even though there's a wealth of information online, there are some questions best answered by walking around the area and making a note of observations.

For example, in Chicago, sometimes a client will ask what parking is like on a particular block, Chaparro said. If the showing is at 10 a.m. in the morning, when many cars are off the street because their owners are at work, he doesn't have an answer to give them.

Several trips past the home at various points of the day -- noting whether there are special parking restrictions marked on the street -- will probably provide a more informed answer.

How to find best agent to sell your home

By Robert J. Bruss Inman News
Spring is the best time of year to sell your house or condo if you want to receive top dollar. The reason is March, April, May and June are the months when the largest number of prospective home buyers are in the market.

If you want to take advantage of the 2007 peak home sales season, now is the time to get ready. Presuming your residence is cleaned, repaired and painted in preparation for selling it, the next vital step is to interview at least three successful realty agents who sell homes like yours in your vicinity.

Even if you think you might like to try selling your home without a professional realty agent, interview three agents anyway. They won't mind, as they know most "for-sale-by-owner" (called "fizz-bo") home sellers within 30 to 60 days realize how difficult the task is and phone to list with one of the agents already interviewed.

Because of the difficulty selling a home alone, especially in today's "buyer's market" in most communities where there has been a slowdown in sales volume, more than 80 percent of home sales involve a real estate sales agent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

THE SEVEN KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK EACH AGENT BEFORE LISTING YOUR HOME FOR SALE.

To avoid selecting a "bad agent" or a "lazy agent" when interviewing at least three successful local agents, don't hesitate to ask each one lots of questions. It's best to write down your questions before the interview so you don't forget any.

Select the agents to be interviewed by (a) asking friends, relatives and business associates for their recommendations; (b) including agents who have recently sold homes like yours in the vicinity; and (c) visiting nearby weekend open houses to meet agents and inspect competitive homes to see how yours compares.

After inspecting your home, during their listing presentations each agent should anticipate the most important questions smart home sellers ask. Here are the seven key questions each agent should answer:

1. HOW MUCH CAN YOU GET FOR MY HOME? Any agent who doesn't answer this question as part of his/her listing presentation is off to a bad start. Each agent interviewed should give you a written "comparative market analysis," called a CMA.

This CMA form shows recent sales prices of homes like yours in the vicinity, the asking prices of nearby similar homes (your competition), the asking prices of recently expired neighborhood listings (usually overpriced), and each agent's recommended listing price for your residence.

Be sure to keep the three (or more) CMAs to compare them. Check to see if each agent used the same "comparables" to reach their estimate of your home's market value and probable selling price.

Watch out for any agent who estimates a very high sales price without written justification. This is called "buying the listing."

Similarly, beware of any agent who estimates an abnormally low market value, possibly indicating the agent is out of touch with the current market or might be trying to get a quick easy sale.

2. WHAT ARE THE NAMES, ADDRESSES AND PHONE NUMBERS OF YOUR FIVE MOST RECENT HOME SELLERS? HOW MANY DAYS ON THE MARKET DID IT TAKE YOU TO SELL EACH HOME? You need this vital information so you can judge the skill of each interviewed agent.

Before signing a listing contract, smart home sellers phone each agent's previous sellers to ask, "Were you in any way unhappy with your agent and would you list your home for sale again with the same agent?"

3. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN SELLING HOMES IN THIS AREA? DO YOU SELL REAL ESTATE FULL TIME? WHAT PROFESSIONAL COURSES AND DESIGNATIONS HAVE YOU COMPLETED? WHERE DO YOU LIVE? The answers to these questions will help decide if this is the type of agent you want to hire.

However, don't necessarily dismiss a relatively new sales agent who might have more time to devote to your listing compared to an "old pro" agent who has many years of home sales experience but who has become lazy and perhaps might even be semi-retired.

Occasionally, you will find a part-time agent who has excellent seller recommendations and who has connections with many prospective buyers.

For example, I know a schoolteacher who is a part-time realty agent, working with a full-time partner agent. She sells real estate full time during vacations and is very successful.

But, as a general rule, listing with a part-time agent means you will get less than the best service.

4. WHAT IS YOUR MINIMUM LISTING TERM? The best answer is 90 days. That means the listing agent has confidence in his/her ability to get your home sold quickly. If an agent insists on a longer listing, make certain it contains an unconditional cancellation clause so you can cancel without any reason after 90 days. This prevents getting stuck with an ineffective agent.

When an agent says something like, "The average number of days on the market for homes in this area is 123 days," your immediate reply should be, "Well, I will be paying a large sales commission and I don't want to hire just an average agent."

5. WHAT IS YOUR MARKETING PLAN FOR MY HOME? The best agents will anticipate this question by including a written marketing plan as part of their listing presentation.

Each written marketing plan should include at least (a) immediately putting your home listing into the local MLS (multiple listing service); (b) promptly holding a weekday open house tour for all MLS member agents; (c) weekend open houses once or twice a month; (d) newspaper ads at least once each week; (e) Internet promotion at www.Realtor.com and on the agent's personal Web site (some agents include a separate Web site for each listed home); (f) brochures (ask to seek samples of the agent's brochures for past and current listings); and (g) depending on the sales price, advertising in other publications, such as local and national home sales magazines.

6. HOW MANY LISTINGS DO YOU HAVE NOW? WHAT ARE THEIR ADDRESSSES? DO YOU HAVE AN OFFICE ASSISTANT? Related questions include asking (a) what day of the week do you take off; (b) who covers for you when you are gone; (c) how promptly do you return phone calls and e-mails; (d) will I be dealing with you or an assistant; and (d) are you planning any vacations during the next three months?

When an agent has too many listings (called a "numbers agent") he or she might not have adequate time to devote to marketing your listing. For this reason, smart home sellers ask, "What percentage of your listings sell and what is the average number of days on the market?"

If you learn the agent works as a "team" with another agent or two, that is usually a good sign. Having a full- or part-time office assistant to handle details, such as arranging inspections, appraisals and sales closings, should be considered a bonus if the agent has a large number of listings.

7. WHAT SALES COMMISSION DO YOU CHARGE FOR A LISTING LIKE MINE? Although a recent survey by Real Trends reports the average home sales commission is 5.1 percent, home sellers should be aware of the pitfalls of cutting a listing commission if similar local listings carry a higher commission rate.

Sales commissions are negotiable. But suppose nearby homes like yours are listed with a 6 percent sales commission. Reducing the sales listing commission to 5 percent or 4 percent could put your home at a serious disadvantage in the current "buyer's market" when there are more homes for sale than there are qualified buyers in the local market.

While discussing the sales commission, be sure your listing specifies how much will go to the listing agent and how much to the buyer's agent.

For example, if you list your home for sale at a reduced 5 percent commission, be sure the buyer's agent will receive a 3 percent commission (to be competitive with other nearby listings) and the listing agent will receive 2 percent of the commission. In some abnormally slow housing markets, eager sellers offer 7 percent commissions with 4 percent going to the buyer's agent.

Other commission alternatives might include a flat fee, such as $5,000, with a so-called discount broker where the seller does much of the work, such as holding weekend open houses and paying for advertising. The big drawback of highly discounted commissions, even if the listing is in the local MLS, is buyer's agents won't be interested in showing such low-commission listings.

In addition to the sales commission, be sure to ask if the listing agent charges any extra fees to you or the buyer. Some brokerages attempt to charge an extra "transaction" or "administration" fee. Be sure such fees are waived if you sign the listing.

SUMMARY: Spring is the peak sales season for homes. But be sure to interview at least three successful local realty agents to select the best one for your home. Ask lots of questions of each agent to determine which agent will be right for you.

I need to sell my investment condo

Real Estate Articles from Inman News

By Ilyce R. Glink

As of two weeks ago, I became a statistic.

At the end of 2006, the number of vacant homes for sale had risen to nearly 3 percent, an all-time high. The new construction investment condo I closed on a few weeks ago and listed last week just added one more to that number.

It isn't that I don't like my condominium. I do. But it's an investment. And when my partners and I put down our hefty deposit check in 2004, it seemed like a can't-miss proposition: a beautiful building with fabulous views, lots of light, hardwood floors, cherry cabinets, granite countertops and a secure parking space, all rolled into a terrific urban, walk-to-everything-with-great-transportation location.

Before we bought, we talked about price points, future sales potential and who would want to live in our condo. Our two-bedroom, two-bath unit plus a den is located in a Chicago suburb with a nearby university. Perhaps the buyers would be an empty nester couple who wanted to stay near their friends and family, or a college professor who wanted to walk to work.

So what went wrong? Apparently, everyone else in America had the same great idea at the same time: Real estate prices are rising at double-digit rates so why not jump in and plunk down some money?

Like I said, it seemed like a great idea at the time. The question for all real estate investors is this: How can you get the property sold without going bankrupt in the process?

For us, it's going to come down to marketing. Here's what we're doing, and how we're doing it:

1. Listing the unit in our local MLS. Since the property is a newly constructed building (actually, some of the top floors are still under construction), we wanted to get the word out to as many local agents and prospective buyers as possible. An agent listed it for us in the local multiple listing service (MLS), but if you decide to sell your investment property as a FSBO (for sale by owner) there are sites that will allow you to list your property locally.

Choosing to list the property in the MLS means you'll have to pay a commission (at the very least) to the agent who brings the buyer. Decide upfront how much you're willing to pay and then make sure to include that information in the listing.

How you write your listing is important as well. Be sure to lead off with the property's strengths: Bright, sunny, great views, cherry cabinets, granite countertops, plenty of storage, and parking for one car. You want the description of the property to be as strong and positive as possible.

2. Harness the power of the Internet. More than 85 percent of all home buyers start their search for a home on the Internet. If your listing is not on the Web, chances are you'll miss out on a huge number of prospective buyers who could be looking at your house.

After we closed on our investment condo, I headed over with my digital camera in hand. I took about 20 different shots of the condo, from every angle. We'll put these photos up on our MLS listing, so that prospective buyers can see them.

We'll also upload the photos to a Web site we're creating especially for this property. You'll be able to view the unit's floor plan, see the photos in a slide show and get a sense of what the condo looks like. The Web site will also contain more specific listing information about the unit and the building, and it'll have our contact information.

We're also having a video shot of the property and the surrounding neighborhood. We'll upload this video to all Web sites that will take it, such as Google and YouTube. You never know where your next buyer is coming from. So, someone who is looking for this kind of condo will be able to find it in an online search.

3. Let everyone know you're selling. While it may be time to sell your investment property, there are two kinds of buyers: someone who might live there as a primary residence or someone who wants to purchase the condo as an investment.

When you start marketing your property, keep in mind that there may be more than one type of buyer, and adjust your plans accordingly. If you invest in creating digital pictures, a digital tour or a video of your property, be sure that you can e-mail these images and video to prospective agents or buyers.

Tell everyone you're selling: your friends, relatives, neighbors, other residents of the building, your therapist, your doctor, etc. Selling is a little like going on a blind date: The date may not be your soul mate, but he or she has a network of friends, and one of those people might be the one.

We're just beginning our investment-selling journey. I'm hoping it'll be short and sweet, but in any case, I'll be sure to provide some updates as we move into spring.

LIVING TRUST IS BEST WAY TO AVOID PROBATE COSTS AND DELAYS

DEAR BOB: My mother has been hospitalized nearly three months. It is only a matter of time until her journey is completed. As the only remaining direct family member, there are some financial challenges to be faced due to her lack of planning. She has no written will. She owns real estate, investments and the customary bank accounts. Her house is paid for. What is the most efficient means of title transfer without interference by the state? --Brad S.

DEAR BRAD: If your mother is mentally competent and able to understand, you should arrange for her to transfer her major assets such as her home and investments into a revocable living trust to avoid probate costs and delays after her passing. Presumably she will leave you those assets and name you as her successor trustee.

After she passes on, as the successor trustee you can then pay any debts and transfer those assets to yourself, as provided by the living-trust terms. If you are the sole heir, this should not be a problem.

You will need an attorney who specializes in living trusts to prepare one according to your mother's wishes. The attorney should also prepare a "pour-over will" for any assets she overlooked.

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WILL HOME TITLE TRANSFER TO LIVING TRUST CAUSE PROPERTY TAX REASSESSMENT?

DEAR BOB: I am concerned that when we change the title on our home from my wife and me as joint tenants into our living trust, the local property tax assessor will consider this an ownership change and reassess our home to raise our property taxes or revoke our homestead exemption. Is this going to be a problem? --Richard S.

DEAR RICHARD: A personal-residence title transfer from two individual owners to the same two individuals who are the beneficiaries of their revocable living trust does not cause property tax reassessment or homestead revocation in most jurisdictions.

However, in Florida some county recorders and assessors insist the words "revocable living trust" be clearly stated on the deed.

Just to be safe, before transferring title please consult an experienced local real estate attorney and/or the county deed recorder and tax assessor to check for any unusual local requirements.

IT'S YOUR FENCE IF IT'S ON YOUR PROPERTY

DEAR BOB: We purchased our house 12 months ago. When getting a professional survey, in conjunction with a remodeling project, we learned the fence separating us from a neighbor is on our side of the boundary by about 2 feet. What rights do we have, if any? --Ben A.

DEAR BEN: If the fence is on your side of the true boundary, it's your fence. If you wish, you can tear it down and rebuild a new fence just on your side of the true boundary.

But before doing that, have a friendly conversation with your neighbor to discuss the survey and explain why you need to move the fence to have enough room for the remodel. Perhaps you can get the neighbor to pay half the cost of an attractive fence you will both enjoy.

Although I don't recommend bringing this issue up, if the fence has been there for many years and the neighbor has used that 2-foot strip of land, perhaps for a garden or lawn, he might have acquired a prescriptive easement to permanently use that land strip. To qualify, he must prove open, notorious, continuous and hostile use for the required number of years and bring a quiet title action in court. The hostile test usually defeats most prescriptive easement claims. You could argue his use was with permission. For details, please consult a local real estate attorney.

Become a billion-dollar agent: By Bernice Ross

What does it take to sell a billion dollars worth of real estate? Steve Kantor's new book, "Billion Dollar Agent -- Lessons Learned," contains a revealing series of interviews with elite agents who have sold a billion dollars worth of real estate or are en route to do so. What's particularly intriguing is how forthcoming the agents were in terms of how they built their businesses, what their ratios were of referrals to new business, and most importantly, what they actually did to achieve this level of success.

A key theme in the book is to build your business on your passion and to delegate everything else. You cannot succeed at this level without a strong support team. Another important theme is that the billion-dollar agents wished they had hired their first assistant sooner. A sizeable majority saw an immediate increase in their business when they hired their first assistant. Kantor hopes to capitalize on this trend by providing a virtual assistant service similar to International Virtual Assistants Association and Real Estate Virtual Assistants Association.

Another shared trait is having written goals. According to Brad Korb at RE/MAX in Burbank, Calif., "Ninety-seven percent of those who have written goals achieve them. Only 3 percent of those without written goals achieve their goals. Write down your major definite purpose in life every day and write 10 ways to get to it. … I have business goals, workout goals, spiritual-time goals, family-time goals and financial goals."
Billion-dollar agents also take time to "work on" their business rather than just "working in" their business. Michael Gerber in "The E-Myth Revisited" argues that many businesses fail because the owners are too focused on delivering their services ("working in their business") and fail to take time to plan ("working on their business"). This process is especially important in achieving high levels of production. Taking time to plan allows you to create systems that save time, create order in your business and improve efficiency.

Kantor draws an interesting distinction between what he calls "hunters" and "farmers." Hunters actively prospect for new business by calling on expired listings, for-sale-by-owners and door-knocking, and continuing to call Web leads until they make personal contact. In contrast, "farmers" rely more on regular contact within their sphere of influence. Based upon the interviews, a sizeable majority of the billion-dollar agents were hunters. As Kantor puts it, "Almost every billion-dollar agent is a hunter -- an extreme hunter. You would not go hungry on an island stranded with a billion-dollar agent. If there is meat running around the island, they will hunt it down, close the deal and bring home the bacon."

Billion-dollar agents are also creative in terms of leveraging their systems. The methods for building this level of business are as diverse as the agents who are included in the book. For example, Stephen O'Hara of RE/MAX Monarch Beach in Orange County, Calif., created the Parent Relocation Council. His Web site, www.schoolfolks.com, is the nation's first Web site that caters to relocating parents. Noah Herrera of RE/MAX Central in Las Vegas prefers to market to multiple clients at the same time. "People try to market one-on-one. If you associate with an organization or a charity, you can do a presentation for 50 people for the same effort as for two people." When Herrera shows new construction to first-time buyers, he loads them on a bus to see the new subdivisions. His record is 30 deals from a single bus.

Another shared characteristic is that these agents are voracious learners. They are always hunting for the next idea that will improve their business. Many of them also have both personal and business coaches. A high percentage attributed their success to the coaching they received.

It's not all business for these agents, however. Over half are actively involved in charity or in other events that allow them to share their abundance with those who are less fortunate than they are.

What holds ordinary agents back? According to "Billion Dollar Agent -- Lessons Learned," the most commonly cited reasons were:

1. They fail to follow-up.

2. They lack negotiation skills.

3. They don't put the clients' interests first.

4. They lack listening and communication skills.

5. They don't stay in regular contact.

How long does it take to become a billion-dollar agent? If you and your team sell $50 million per year for 20 years, you would be at a billion dollars. There's a tremendous amount of wisdom in this book from the undisputed best of the best.

Company blogs: Real estate Articles from Inman News

By Glenn Roberts Jr.
Inman News

Editor's note: In this in-depth four-part series, Inman News tackles the exploding trend in real estate blogs. We chat with some of the most well-known and prolific bloggers in the real estate brokerage, mortgage and title insurance industries to see what makes these blogs tick. (Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

You might not expect to read fish jokes, a tribute to a dead coffee pot, and detailed and sometimes graphic disclosures about the pains of startups at an apartment-rental Web site. That's where the company blog fits in.

The founders of HotPads.com, an apartment-search company that hit the Web in November 2005, launched a company blog in July 2006 that chronicles the company's growth and industry trends -- and mixes in some humor throughout the journey.

Though the approach can vary, other real estate-related companies, too, are finding that company blogs can provide a human side to the Web and facilitate direct and two-way communication with consumers, customers and other industry professionals.

"It's nice to give a voice to our company. If you have a blog, there is an ability for people to learn more about the people behind the company," said Douglas Pope, vice president and director of operations for HotPads. The company can connect with its users through the blog, he said, adding, "It has also been a good way to contribute to the real estate community by ... starting a discussion.

"By far the best benefit is the networking aspect of blogging. We read other industry blogs and other bloggers read ours. It has been a very beneficial way to build relationships in the industry," Pope said.

HotPads.com site users, including renters and property managers, are the target audience for the company blog, though Pope said the actual audience includes potential partners, startups and other industry bloggers.

HotPads allows blog readers to post comments anonymously. "We haven't deleted any comments other than some spam ... anyone who wants to say anything about any post is perfectly fine with us. We're just glad they're reading it," he said. While some companies feature blog posts authored by several employees, most of the HotPads content is created by Colleen Corgan, the company's "chief bloggernaut," Pope said.

While the company has used the blog as a platform to announce new features at its rental-search Web site, employees writing in the blog -- as you might expect -- are tight-lipped when it comes to new features that are in development or on the drawing board.

And then there are those only-in-a-blog posts that don't seem to fit neatly into any category but definitely provide some comic relief, such as the off-the-wall Feb. 1 post with fish jokes ("What did the fish say when it ran into the wall? ... "I'm such a dumb bass," etc.).

Or the humbling July 18 post about a "boondoggle" in which HotPads "enlisted friends, parents, siblings and unsuspecting computer engineers to schlep around the city taking pictures of every single rental house, garden apartment, apartment community, and many ... MANY homes that probably have never donned the 'For Rent' sign in the window," and during two of the hottest months of the year. The company later abandoned this massively scaled picture-taking scavenger hunt.

And then there was the Jan. 9 HotPads blog post about the company coffee maker that "quit, cited being 'overworked.' We lost our first coffee maker just before launch in November of 2005. This recent loss comes at another importune time, as we will be launching a new version of the site in the next few hours."

There can be a silver lining to such brutally honest posts -- Pope noted that HotPads received a coffee maker in the mail from the folks at HomeRentals.net when they read the post about the recently deceased coffee maker. "It makes really good coffee too," Pope said. "So I guess blogs can have both direct and indirect benefits for employees."

BlueRoof Blog

Greg Tracy, a real estate industry veteran who founded BlueRoof, a real estate brokerage company in Utah, began writing a personal blog about three years ago. He wrote about personal events and his family. Those were the days, he said, when nobody was really reading blogs. Then in February 2006 he launched an industry blog titled, "Reality of Real Estate," which morphed into the BlueRoof.com Blog.

And over time, as traffic has grown, the posts have become more factual and less opinion-based, he said. "The purpose of it is the same: educate and inform the consumer, vent about the industry and also create dialog with people about different topics."

Tracy, who has been the exclusive author for the BlueRoof.com Blog, said it's important to showcase personality in a blog. "People should put personality into it even if it is a company blog. Don't make it a corporate thing -- make it a company thing. When people get too corporate it just becomes bland. A lot of times agent blogs are all about personality and company blogs are all about promoting the company. People don't go to a blog to want to be sold." Some of the latest posts at the BlueRoof.com Blog address such topics as Valentine's Day gift ideas, the Superbowl predictions, and homes of the future.

Visitors to the blog are mostly real estate industry professionals, Tracy said, and a smaller group of local consumers. Though it's difficult to quantify the amount of real estate business that is tied to the blog, Tracy said that many clients are familiar with the company blog.

"People really want that access to information without having the obligation to work with you," Tracy said, and blogs are one tool to empower consumers.

Writing for the company blog has been a learning experience, Tracy said. "One of the posts in particular I got a lot of heat over was an opinion about the business practices and companies I don't care for. I don't do that anymore. I'm more positive. I'm not as critical about certain things in public that might be part of a public discussion," he said.

"I've also learned that blogs have legs -- I've got some posts I wrote six months ago and they are just now getting traction." Tracy has plans to open up the blog to other writers and to feature some new types of content, such as some property listings, at the blog.

Zillow Blog

Home valuation and listings site Zillow.com has a team of contributors to its company blog.

There was a lot of internal debate about whether the company should have a blog and the type of comments and content that should be allowed at the blog, said Zillow spokeswoman Amy Bohutinsky. The conclusion: "If you're going to do a blog you have to do it 100 percent. It's not really authentic unless you use that blog as a two-way communication channel for the persons who are reading this."

The company, she said, has tried to make the blog "a core part of who we are. We are trying to listen to what people say to us and respond to it and take it into account and use it to develop future products and changes."

A team of about seven company bloggers meet once a week to discuss blog content, she said, and other employees are able to contribute as well. The blog has been useful for the customer service and marketing folks at Zillow, she said.

In addition to using the blog as a communication tool to announce new offerings, the blog has also enabled Zillow to gather direct feedback from consumers and real estate agents who are using the site. That feedback can be as valuable as a focus group, she said.

Some examples of Zillow Blog posts include: moon base construction, tips on blog comments, a mention of another startup that starts with "Z," and real estate market reports. The company blog has been used to promote ventures such as the Zillow-launched blogging "Carnival of Real Estate" and real estate information at the Zillow Real Estate Wiki.

The dialog created by the blog is useful, Bohutinsky said. "We try to respond to the comments and clarify things and answer people's questions. We have been able to have good conversations on our blog and on other people's blogs about what we are and what we aren't doing."

The blog, she added, "is one of the most pure channels of feedback you can get, and instant."

ZipRealty Blog

The publicly traded real estate brokerage company ZipRealty maintains a blog, too. Myron Lo, director of product strategy for ZipRealty, noted that public companies have very specific guidelines they must follow, and ZipRealty closely monitors the content at the blog site. Some of the content, he said, is approved by the legal team prior to posting.

All comments at the blog are moderated and offensive comments such as personal attacks are not allowed. Also, registration is required to participate, while some other blogs allow anonymous comments and do not pre-screen comments prior to posting.

Launched in mid-2006, the blog is intended as another line of communication to the company's customers, Lo said. "It's an informal voice to communicate to our customers with." The Web site is useful, he said, to promote new site tools, and the blog has also been used to disseminate market statistics and industry news. One of the latest posts contains a list of property-specific consumer reviews that were rejected from inclusion on the company's main Web site.

Lo said that most of the blog content is written by employees at the company's headquarters.

Leslie Tyler, ZipRealty's vice president of online marketing, said that the company blog represents an informal approach to meeting online consumers. "We're always trying new ways to reach out to customers," she said.

Sellsius Blog

A company blog can predate the company itself. Joseph G. Ferrara and Rudolph D. Bachraty III of the Sellsius Real Estate Blog have established themselves and their brand in the real estate blogging community even before their planned property listings site has launched. The Sellsius site will reportedly be a property-search site with listings information supplied by a network of real estate agents, though the Web site is not yet live.

The blog, meanwhile, launched about a year ago. "Basically we just write about what we like and we're really not afraid to write about anything," said Bachraty. "As long as we can help them learn about this product, service or new person in the industry we don't feel there is anything that we can't write about."

Ferrara added, "We really try to tie into real estate. We try to make it interesting. We try not to be predictable. A blog has to be more magnetic than sticky ... something that keeps you coming back."

All kinds of comments are welcome at the site, he added, and the site has even invited blog participants who have been shunned by other blog sites for bad behavior. "My response to people is, 'Don't try to shut them up. Make them speak. Challenge them,'" he said.

The backwards approach to launching a blog before the company turned out to be a good thing," Ferrara said. "We got to meet a lot of people in the industry -- we got to build a lot of relationships." The Sellsius founders and several other industry bloggers say that relationships with others in the blogging community have been very valuable.

Blogging can definitely open doors that would be difficult to pry open in the real world, Ferrara added. "You don't have to go to the receptionist. All the doors are open. It's remarkable the access that you can get just by blogging."

The Sellsius bloggers are good promoters -- ads at the site offer a line of Sellsius fan gear, including hats and T-shirts. As with other real estate blogs, posts at the Sellsius blog can stray a bit from the real estate path: there are recent posts for a cat with painted hearts, a trend report for Trulia, a gift-wrapped house, and the launch of a real estate video magazine.

Real Estate Tomato Blog

Jim Cronin, a real estate consultant, said he launched his blog as a way to spill, sort and store his thoughts that he amassed from years of working with industry professionals. He had earlier worked at Z57, an Internet marketing company that he joined at an early stage in 2000.

What he didn't realize at first is that people would actually be drawn to the site and he would be drawn into a larger community of real estate bloggers. Other bloggers began to reference his site, and he saw that blogging was emerging as a powerful force in the industry and his site's audience grew as other bloggers referenced his blog content.

"All of the sudden people from across the country were realizing my voice had some strength with it," he said. And it didn't matter that he was wearing a backwards hat and rock-and-roll T-shirt and sweatpants while connecting with industry professionals online -- it was the message that mattered, he said.

"I just found that the blog was the perfect vehicle at the right time to take advantage of," Cronin said. His blog, "Real Estate Tomato," is now helping to drive his consulting business, he said. The blog name, by the way, is a play on words for Sacramento, Calif. -- sometimes jokingly referred to as "Sacra-tomato."

The content at the blog has become more focused over time, Cronin said, and the site is heavily focused on Internet marketing tips.

"Blogging isn't for everyone but your business needs a voice," he said. "I think that voice needs to be out there. Today's first-time home buyer is going to be expecting it." Real estate companies should put all of their eggs in the blogging basket, he said, as the power of blogs in industry marketing efforts may decline over time. He said that video will replace blogging as the place to be in the real estate industry. "I see the convergence of entertainment, television and the computer all into one screen."