Since the beginning of the short-sale problem, NAR members have been seeking plain-language, common-sense tips for dealing with these difficult transactions. We tried to help fill the information gap earlier this year with two free webinars, one in March and one in May, with Scott Thompson, a short-sale specialist who shared his ideas in a way that seemed to resonate with our members. The last time I checked, just under 39,000 of you either attended, viewed, or downloaded the two webinars. They were also incorporated into NAR’s new Short Sales and Foreclosures Resource Certification (SFR) curriculum.

Lynn Madison

Not having seen the platform I can’t say anything about it, but at the very least it holds out the promise of helping servicers process short sales more systematically. I expect it’ll take a while for BofA to iron things out after servicers have had a chance to use the platform for a period of time. It’ll be interesting to see if processing is in fact quicker and more predictable.

The other speaker is Lynn Madison, a veteran real estate broker who now spends much of her time as a real estate training specialist. She helped develop the curriculum for NAR’s new SFR certification and she knows short sales as well as anyone. I had the pleasure of attending a short-sales seminar she hosted at the 2009 NAR Conferece in San Diego last week and it was probably one of the most information-rich 90 minutes I have ever spent at a conference. I posted a brief write-up of her session, which focused on the buyer side of short sales, right after the session. If you want to get a taste of the breadth and depth of her tips, this post might help. It’s hard not to be impressed with her command of the nuances of real estate transactions.

What else has changed on the short-sale front? Well, since we hosted the first webinar, the Obama adminstration has said it will release guidelines to help standardize processing, but the guidelines have yet to be released. Nevertheless, as Sunlin told us, lenders like B0fA are eagerly awaiting the administration’s input. We’re hoping the guidelines will be out before Dec. 10, our Webinar date, so we can offer to Sunlin and Madison the chance to talk about them.

Register now for Today’s Changing Short-Sale Environment. It’s free and takes place at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, Thursday, Dec. 10.

There are many reasons for the success of NAR’s most recent Call for Action, to which more than 18 percent of NAR members—a record— responded.

First and foremost is the compelling subject of the CFA: getting the home buyer tax credit extended and expanded. As NAR Chief Ecionomist Lawrence Yun has been saying for weeks, residential home prices are stabilizing and are on the cusp of heading up—the all-important precursor to restored confidence in homeownership. We’re relying on that improved confidence to boost sales, tighten inventories, and restore healthy credit markets.

Given that, letting the credit expire on Nov. 30 could have stopped sales momentum dead in its tracks.

It was also huge that Congress added the $6,500 credit for repeat buyers, because throughout 2009 much of the sales weight has been carried by first-time buyers. For market stability, repeat buyers needed to get off the fence and Congress saw that.

Behind the scenes, though, the efforts of NAR’s volunteers and staff to boost Calls for Action responses was a home run. The association—at all levels—has been using a lot of creative thinking to build on its already dynamic grassroots efforts, and the staggering 18-percent CFA response is one of the fruits of that.

Part of that creative thinking is the launch of the Broker Involvement Program, in which brokers reach out to their sales assiociates during a CFA and recommend their participation. To make it easy, NAR sets it up so e-mails to sales associates from brokers are automated. Of course, brokers have the option of not participating if they have a different position than NAR on an issue.

It’s not an exaggeration to say growth of the program has exploded. In early 2008, shortly after the program launched, fewer than 60 brokers, representing about 80,000 sales associates, were participating. When I last checked, about 2,500 brokers, respresenting more than 210,000 sales associates, were participating. That’s a more than 150 percent increase in participating sales associates, and a more than 4,000 percent increase in brokers.

I interviewed brokers involved in the program for the video above, and it was interesting to hear their take on the program. What surprised me is how quickly sales associates took to it. David Howell, a broker with McEnearney Associates in McLean, Va., said the sales associates in his office feel much more connected to the big picture and that it’s helping them improve their business. So, there seems to be a bottom-line benefit as much as a big-picture one.

The video’s about five minutes long. If you have questions about how the program works, or what its benefits are to brokers and their associates, the video might answer them.

At the REALTORS Conference & Expo last weekend, many NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS members got their first look at HouseLogic. Hahn quite rightly said the site’s launch may have been lost in all the talk about the REALTORS Property Resource. But the beautifully designed HouseLogic — which aims to mobilize home owners on issues that matter to both REALTORS and consumers — deserves attention in its own right.

“The heart and soul of HomeLogic.com is political advocacy,” Hahn said. “If NAR is successful here, HouseLogic will permanently change the landscape for Realtors.”

There was a lot of ground covered during the Board of Directors meeting Monday at the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo. Here are some of the highlights:

• The REALTOR® Property Resource (RPR): Attendees got a guided tour of this impressive new site, which ultimately aims to cover pretty much every property in the United States. RPR will be a massive database that will allow NAR members (and only NAR members) to search properties across numerous criteria, from school districts to tax info. Users will also be able to gauge the value of a property based on home improvement projects, site conditions, and comparables. Call it contemporary. Call it cutting edge. Just don’t call it an MLS.

• HouseLogic.com: This new consumer-oriented site will help consumers become responsible home owners. Through HouseLogic, they can get information about high-value improvement projects and interact with other “alpha” home owners. For REALTORS®, it’s way to connect with and serve as a resource for current and potential clients, and get consumers behind certain legislative calls to action.

• REALTOR.com: Errol Samuelson, president of REALTOR.com®, emphasized the company’s dominance of the market. He offered some interesting stats to make his point: REALTOR.com currently holds 63 percent of the market, and the nearest competitor only has 10 percent. Moreover, approximately five billion properties were viewed on REALTOR.com last month. Samuelson also discussed some important new features, such as predictive search and social media elements, and pointed attendees to two sites: beta.realtor.com, a test site for improved search and Freetrainingatrealtor.com, which offers programs to familiarize users with the site and its functionality.

NAR CEO Dale Stinton summed it all up nicely after the RPR demo.

“This is a very big day for us,” he said. “We’re redefining and redeveloping the entire value proposition for our members. It’s not about technology. It’s not about money. It’s not about NAR politics. It’s not about the business of NAR. It’s about core competencies: We’re oriented toward service, we have scale, and we have leadership, and we’re trying to take advantage of these qualities on your behalf. We’re laser-focused on providing services to our member agents and brokers now.”

For complete Board of Directors meeting coverage, go here.

There’s a temptation among buyers hoping to land a good deal with a short sale to avoid committing themselves with money and effort until the seller’s lender gives its OK, but that’s a sure-fire way to ensure the deal won’t close, short-sales trainer Lynn Madison said Sunday at the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo.

Lenders are too backlogged and have too much to lose to consider offers whose buyers haven’t provided earnest money, had an inspection conducted, or applied for financing, said Madison, who help devise and also teaches classes for NAR’s new Short Sales and Foreclosures Certification Program (SFR).

Doing all of these things—along with submitting a reasonable offer—can improve your client’s chances greatly. This is not the time to low-ball on a property whose value has already deeply plunged, she said.

FHA pre-foreclosure guidelines, which provide a widely used model even in the conventional market, directs servicers to consider offers starting at 88 percent of value and then to work down from there. Coming in with an offer at 50 percent of value just won’t fly, she said.

Also, when you’re helping buyers, make sure everything is OK on the seller side. It’s appropriate to verify with the listing agent if the seller really has a hardship and the agent has appropriately submitted a short sale package with the lender. If either of these isn’t true, you’re wasting your buyer’s time because the chance of getting the deal to closing is nil.

On hardship, it’s not enough for sellers to say the value of their property has plunged. That alone does not constitute a hardship. There has to be other issues at play: the sellers lost a job or took a pay cut, they have to move, they face big medical bills, and so on.

If your buyer client agrees to make a reasonable offer and shows a commitment with earnest money, a home inspection, and so on, then it’s reasonable to ask the seller to agree, as part of the purchase contract, to hold off considering additional offers for a period of time. Lenders have shown a willingness to accept this type of restriction if they see that the buyer offer is indeed reasonable and the buyer’s committed, she said.

The advantage of including such a restriction is that it helps attract good buyers. Without any promise from the seller to take the property off the market while the lender considers the deal, another buyer can come in with a higher offer at the last minute and run away with the deal. No buyer wants to make an investment of time and money only to become “road kill” at the eleventh hour, she says.

Buyers with good offers deserve reasonable protection from that happening—and lenders are recognizing that such protection leads to better offers over the long-term, she said.

These issues and more will be discussed in detail in a free Webinar on Dec. 10 at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. Speakers will be Madison along with Dave Sunlin, senior vice president of Bank of America Home Loans. Register for the Webinar, called Today’s Changing Short-Sales Environment.

Making informative and even entertaining videos of your listings seems like a complicated undertaking involving a professional camera, lights, editing equipment, and a lot of knowledge of how all that equipment works, but in fact you can be uploading videos tomorrow without too much trouble.

I’ll be talking about this at 1 p.m. today at the NAR Expo booth at the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Diego. Maybe you won’t be posting videos tomorrow when you’re back at the office but you’ll certainly see that it’s pretty easy to do.

What I’ll be focusing on is the Flip camera. If you haven’t seen one of these yet, I’m sure you will soon. They’ve been around for a few years, cost about $100 last time I checked, and they’re just too handy for words. They’re a little thicker than an iPhone but they take great video, come with a modest zoom, and you need no cables to upload their content to your computer. You just flip out a built-in USB port, plug that into your computer, and you’re ready to go.

Flip comes with an editing platform but you don’t have to use it. (I’ve never used it.) I use Final Cut Express, about $200, which works seamlessly with the iMovie video editing software that comes with a Mac (if you have the iLife suite). It’s pretty standard today, and iMovie take just a few hours to master.

Final Cut Express is just like the professional Final Cut Pro software. The only difference is depth of capability. The Pro version has much deeper capability, but there is no need to go that deep, especially if you’re just using it for listing videos.

I’ll be talking about how to set up your shots so you get a smooth look. I’ll also talk about editing and adding audio, both narration and music. I’ll demonstrate the use of the Flip, and one of my NAR colleagues from Information Central will walk you through an uploading and editing primer.

If you want to get a professional look, smart editing is essential, and that takes more than a day to learn, especially if you use Final Cut Express. If you use the Flip editing platform or iMovie, you’ll be terrific after a day of dabbling.

Take a look at the two-minute listing video I made above. It’s a mock listing; you won’t find it in any MLS. But it’ll give you an idea how you might make your own video. Even if you would do things differently than I did (after all, you’re the real estate pro, not me), you’ll see techniques that will get you thinking.

Executives from some of the largest brokerages in the country expect to see their sales grow 6-8 percent in 2010 and home prices to start heading up about 3 percent, REALTORS® heard in a state of the real estate industry discussion Saturday at the 2009 NAR Conference & Expo.

John L. Scott Real Estate chairman and CEO J. Lennox Scott said expansion of the tax credit to include repeat buyers will help boost middle-market sales next year, although mortgage financing above the $417,000 non-jumbo conforming loan limit will remain a challenge. “The repeat tax credit will at least start a conversation about buying” among existing home owners, Scott said.

Congress recently extended temporary high-cost loan limits of $729,750 for 2010 but the lion’s share of markets don’t qualify for those so-called conforming-jumbo loans. As a result, repeat buyers face tougher underwriting challenges. “People applying for a $417,000 mortgage are not wealthy—they’re two teachers,” said Helen Hanna Casey, president of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, which operates in Pennsylvania, New York, and other states in that region.

The improvement in the middle market will help tighten inventories, helping to shore up prices, but the upper-end market will continue to underperform until companies start hiring again. That’s when the industry will see more relocation business among transferees, a critical component of the upper-end market, said Scott.

Merle Whitehead, president and CEO of RealtyUSA, said a key job of brokers next year is making sure their sales associates understand FHA, because federally backed mortgages will remain the principal provider of mortgage financing for most borrowers. Too many sales associates still think of FHA as financing for people who can’t qualify for conventional mortgages, but in fact FHA is the main source of mortgage capital today. “We have to change the thoughts and beliefs of our agents,” he said.

The session was hosted by Harley Rouda, Jr., chief of Real Living, based in Columbus, Ohio.

What a night it was at REALTOR® Magazine’s YPN exclusive, invitation-only event on the pool deck of the Hotel Solamar. Just when I started thinking that a rooftop might not have been the best place for anyone who enjoys mingling without goose bumps all over their body, we were greeted by conveniently placed heat lamps and fire pits that not only added to the modern feel, but also ensured that everyone stayed warm and comfortable.

I didn’t get to talk to as many people as I would have liked, but of those I did get to interact with, it was nice to see a diversification of experience and levels of success. In this summit of the “who’s who” of young people in real estate, I was surrounded by past and present 30 Under 30 honorees, TV producers, and tomorrow’s up-and-coming stars. One moment I was talking to a charming lady from a  resort destination in Idaho, and the next minute I was greeted by an agent from Beverly Hills, Calif. There was one thing that I found in common with each and every agent that I came in contact with, though, and that was that they all had a curiosity and hunger to learn how to better succeed in today’s changing market.

I got into one conversation with a group of agents from different parts of the country who were all sharing what works for them in their neck of the woods. Although worded in different ways, all of their answers really boiled down to one principle: The more that people like you, the more that they will use you and refer you. That’s it. It is that simple and works in any part of the world. It is important to work on your negotiation skills and marketing strategies, but if people don’t like being around you, nothing else will matter.

Kudos go out to the organizers of this top-notch event. It was nice to be able to be part of a large gathering of REALTORS® that didn’t leave you wanting to jump off of a cliff by the time it was over. Having a positive attitude and the ability to create your own environment are two of the traits that most top producers possess, and that was evident on this night.

In a conference this size, you have to make choices about the sessions you attend. The cool thing is that even when you miss a session, you don’t necessarily miss the lesson. Take today’s lunch for example, when we grabbed a bite at the San Diego Convention Center. While sharing a communal table, we stumbled into an energetic conversation among several REALTORS® who had just attended the “Mobile Technology Guide for 2010″ session with Max Pigman.

They shared  their excitement about the business potential of  technology and social media tools, and discussed how they could be used to build relationships with clients new and old. While several already used sites like Facebook and Twitter in their personal lives, none had yet deployed them as business tools.  However, inspired by Pigman’s presentation, they were all enthusiastic about taking the leap.

Said one REALTOR®: “I need to get up to speed on this stuff. Technology is the way everything is going now, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In.”

So even if you missed this session, as we both did, or weren’t able to join us in San Diego, you can still benefit from many of the lessons learned here. Audio recordings of many conference sessions are available. So take advantage! You can also get more information on Max and his technology workshops.

In an address to hundreds of REALTORS® at the 2009 NAR Conference & Expo Saturday afternoon, FHA Commissioner David Stevens offered a fervent defense of the organization’s financials. He specifically addressed the negative press surrounding the FHA’s recent audit, which showed part of its capital reserves below congressionally mandated levels.

Stevens distinguished the FHA’s capital reserves for unexpected losses from its regular reserve fund, which remains above 2 percent. Together, the two funds equal almost 4 percent in reserves. “We’ve come through the 100-year flood,” he said. “Despite the crisis, FHA is still standing with $31 billion in capital, $3.5 billion more than it had a year ago.”

For this reason, Stevens said comparisons between the FHA and bailed-out companies and GSEs are “ludicrous.” As he pointed out, the FHA was a small part of the market until recently, mainly because it didn’t offer exotic financial products. (It currently comprises about a quarter of the residential mortgage market.)

Right now, the FHA is performing exactly as it should, Stevens said. “FHA has always played a counter-cyclical role in the housing finance system,” he explained. “It’s designed to provide stable sources of capital in an unstable world. Without FHA, there would be no market, and this economic recovery would be significantly slower.”

He also defended the government’s economic relief and stimulus efforts, much of which has been financed with unprecedented deficit spending. “Worrying about deficits right now is like worrying about water conservation when your house is on fire,” he said. “We’re seeing home prices stabilize, and your own Chief Economist [Lawrence Yun] predicts home prices will rise next year. That didn’t happen by accident. That happened because of the stimulus.”

More on the FHA and Stevens here and here.