Comments on: Hope is No Longer A Good Strategy

By: Camille Mims

Camille Mims — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:47:41 +0000

So true! It is more important than ever to re-tool ourselves and look for creative income streams. Fonville Morisey has recently enhanced our full service rental program to turly incubate buyer leads. This is accomplished by auto drip email campaign and cash rebate offer for staying in the Fonville Morisey family. In return, we have boosted our bottom line and saved business we feel easily would have been lost in the past.

By: Alex Cortez

Alex Cortez — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:45:36 +0000

Until unemployment numbers start decreasing, we will not see long-term gains in the real estate market. At the end of the day, if a person needs to make a choice between feeding the family and paying the mortgage, guess which one will get picked. Staggering numbers of mortgages in default, low consumer confidence and high unemployment rates are not good indicators of a rebound in the RE market. Rather than HOPING that things will be better, we as professionals need to educate ourselves on what is going on in the market and advise our clients accordingly. Good post.

By: Glenn Sanford

Glenn Sanford — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:11:05 +0000

Keep in mind that many economists that are predicting what is going on in the market are the same economists that are hired by trade groups and large companies that have a vested interest in seeing the housing market improve. Generally speaking you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you and economists are not immune to being influenced by those whom they are paid to provide advise. This ultimately yields in many cases predictions which are more optimistic. Think about being an economist for NAR for example. NAR needs relatively positive spin to keep its members “happy”. If NAR starts quoting Nouriel Roubini on a regular basis the market would have dropped even faster IMHO. What NAR needs is a more balanced opinion to show the silver lining in the storms taking place which ultimately means many of those paid to predict will predict in a fashion that benefits again their employers.

Also we mere humans generally speaking really don’t want to know how bad the market is. We aren’t quoting Henry Dent, George Soros, or for that matter Roubini for the mere fact that it won’t generally get buyers to purchase homes through us. The consumers will literally get out of our cars and offices and go to someone else who has a more optimistic outlook that supports what they want to do in the first place which is purchase a home.

By: Diane Guercio

Diane Guercio — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:05:08 +0000

The last paragraph summed it up for me. There will be always people who need to buy or sell; go with the agent who can help you arrive at a realistic price out of the gate and has a solid marketing strategy.
Someone who tells you that they can test the waters at a higher list price is wasting your time, in addition to actually jeopardizing the sale of your home. -Diane at Towne & Country, Realtors