The Super Bowl is less than a week away and fans are abuzz in anticipation for the “HarBowl” or the “SuperBaugh,” as the matchup between San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens pits sibling coaches against one another.
But football in general is a family affair — especially among viewers. According to Century 21’s Big Game Survey conducted in December, 84 percent of Americans watch the game from the comfort of their own home, a friend’s home, or a family member’s home.
“It gives us an unprecedented opportunity to tell our story in front of the largest TV viewing audience of the year,” said Century 21 Chief Marketing Officer Bev Thorne. “What’s great is it’s set in the home, which is the heart and soul of the services we offer.”
Drawing a record 111.3 million viewers last year, Super Bowl game day has evolved into a celebrated multimedia phenomenon, infiltrating YouTube channels, Facebook statuses, and Twitter feeds. It’s also a big game day for advertisers — and Century 21 is in the huddle again this year.
Last year, they became the first real estate company to advertise during the Super Bowl in 21 years. The commercial featured Donald Trump, Deion Sanders, and Apolo Anton Ohno working with a Century 21 agent who does it “Smarter. Bolder. Faster.”
“Because [the Super Bowl] brings together friends and family in a very familial environment, it’s a great opportunity for lots of conversation, so we’re putting our Century 21 agents in the middle of those conversations,” Thorne said.
Super Bowl advertisers paying between $3.7 million and $3.8 million per 30-second ad spot. For Century 21, that investment paid off in 2012. Continue reading »
The numbers are looking up for the 55-plus housing market. But there’s a question of how long these numbers will be available, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
At a briefing during the group’s annual conference, NAHB Vice President of Survey and Housing Policy Research Paul Emrath was upbeat about the recovery of housing targeted toward seniors and baby boomers. He noted in particular that builder confidence in new, single family homes in the 55-plus market tripled in the third quarter of 2012 as compared to the same time in 2011.
“Everything is up, year-over-year,” Emrath said. “It’s an indication that we’re starting to dig out of the hole we fell into in 2009.”
In NAHB’s forecast, boomers and seniors are projected to grow their share of the market over the next few years. By 2020, the group expects the market share of U.S. households in the 55-plus age bracket to grow more than four percent, to 46.6 percent.
Yet Emrath warned that the future of NAHB’s reporting on boomer and senior markets is in peril because the Census Bureau changed the way that they collect generational information.
“The forecast that you just saw is at risk right now,” Emrath said. “When I get back to Washington, I’m going to spend a lot of time writing letters trying to persuade [HUD and the Census Bureau] that they were misguided in removing these 55-plus questions from their surveys.”
In addition to the economic data, Emrath hit a few of the boomer and senior highlights of NAHB’s new consumer preference survey, called What Home Buyers Really Want. Continue reading »
Low inventories have created a seller’s market, and your buyers may be tempted to write multiple purchase offers on their favorite listing, for instance, as well as the close second.
On the one hand, it may increase the odds of their getting one of the two homes they want. But is it worth the legal risk if the buyer needs to back out of one of the offers? They could end up in multiple fully-executed contracts to purchase if the offers weren’t written with adequate contingencies allowing them to cancel. They could be accused of breaking a good faith covenant and face major legal ramifications.
How would you advise your client?
New ABR® pilot class participants.
An Accredited Buyer’s Representative course may help.
“Never let your clients enter into multiple contracts without intent to buy,” said instructor Adorna Occhialini Carroll, CRB, ABR, GRI, broker/owner of Realty3 in Berlin, Conn., and president of Dynamic Directions, Inc., an international sales training consulting firm. This was one of many important buyer-related topics covered the debut of a new ABR class at the National Association of REALTORS® headquarters in Chicago last week. About 25 REALTORS® from around the country participated in the two-day VIP ABR course, covering everything from buyer’s representation agreements handling objections.
“Our hope is to expose the course so that brokers will recommend the ABR designation to their agents as an essential key component of their professional development,” said Carroll.
The course is designed for any REALTOR® active in real estate. In order to achieve the actual ABR designation, you also need to take one elective course and have proof of five closed transactions where you have represented the buyer.
NAR First Vice President Steve Brown, broker/owner of Irongate Inc., REALTORS® in Dayton, Ohio, was one of the course attendees. Continue reading »
Smile. It’s a simple but powerful gesture.
Smiling says something about your character. It puts people at ease, increases attractiveness, and it’s contagious.
“Some of us need to have more peace in our lives. People want to be around positive people,” said Darryl Davis, New York-based speaker, trainer, and comedian who has been in the real estate business since he was 19 years old. Davis presented stress-relieving tips during the REALTORS® Conference & Expo in Orlando Sunday. “It’s hard to smile and be angry and pissed off at the same time.”
A career in real estate can come with a lot of stress, so much so that it’s often ranked one of the most stress-filled jobs. The amount of endorphins released from smiling actually equals 2,000 bars of chocolate, inducing happy feelings and lowering blood pressure.
So, next time you’re in an argument with someone, just plant a smile on your face. It will either defuse the situation, or you’ll get the better of the other person. Either way it’s a win for you, Davis joked.
In addition to showing your pearly-whites, there are other ways to stress less. Here are Davis’s top three tips:
- Let go of your baggage. You’ve made choices in your business and your personal life; many of those choices were spot-on, and some maybe weren’t so great. If you keep beating yourself up over those bad choices, you’re going to continue living in the past. “It’s like driving a car looking in the rear view mirror. Eventually you’re going to crash,” said Davis. It’s time to accept the choices you’ve made in life, for better or worse, and re-focus your energy on moving forward.
- Be committed to what’s possible. Davis ran the New York City Marathon in 2006. He had never done anything like it before. In fact, he said he was so out of shape, that he only made it 0.33 miles during his first training run. But because he had a higher purpose for running the marathon – raising money for children suffering from leukemia and lymphoma – he stayed on top of his training and completed the marathon five months later, raising $25,000 for charity. The key to reaching any goal, he said, is envisioning what you want and then creating it. Start by painting a picture of your life and career goals. “Your success exists in the future; you just have to figure out how to reach it,” Davis said.
- Focus on improving your skills. People can usually relate to those who have had a similar experience in their lives. If you’re having trouble communicating with a client, try using stories, metaphors, and analogies from your own life to handle objections. Your skills also improve when you surround yourself with positive, motivating people. So avoid the “negative-Nancy” in your office and hang around those people who will inspire success.
Marki Lemons presenting at the Marketing Forum during the REALTORS® Conference & Expo in Orlando Nov. 10, 2012.
Marki Lemons is a foodie. She loves trying new restaurants in her Chicago neighborhood. At every restaurant she tries, she takes a picture of her meal via Instagram and writes a review on Yelp.
This may not seem like it has much to do with her real estate business, but it actually has everything to do with it. Lemons practices “SoMoLo”—social, mobile, local marketing to connect with potential clients.
“They know what I eat, what I like, and, most of all, that I’m a community expert,” said Lemons, ABR, CRS, short sale trainer and sales associate with Keller Williams Realty in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
Lemons presented her tips for going SoMoLo during the REALTORS® Conference & Expo Marketing Forum in Orlando Saturday. For her, it involves focusing on creating and sharing visual content. For example, she shares her foodie Instagram images on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and foursquare, extending her social media marketing’s consistency and reach.
And don’t forget about Pinterest, she said. Food is one of the top categories on this visually-based social site to be shared or re-pinned, she said. Another idea for Pinterest is creating a marketing board on your page with photos of the agents in your office. This “Meet the Agents” board creates an opportunity for the pictures and bios of your agents to be re-pinned, Tweeted, or shared among a broader audience.
“Pinterest can drive a high amount of traffic to your Web site, even more than Facebook, Twitter, and Google,” Lemons said. The secret is utilizing the URL embedded within each photo pin. This will increase the engagement from your pins and direct followers to your Web site.
More than 20,000 images have been re-pinned over 10 million times, and more than 80 percent of photos are re-pinned on Pinterest. Continue reading »
Chances are, you have heard of the Realtors Property Resource® (RPR) by now. But what is it, exactly, and how can it benefit you?
More than four years ago, the idea of a nationwide online database of comprehensive, high-value property information was conceived from an idea that came out of NAR’s Second Century Ventures (SCV) initiative. A plan was developed and approved by National Association of REALTORS® leadership to provide this as a benefit to members, and a very knowledgeable team was organized to execute the initiative.
During the past couple of years, RPR has partnered with about 440 multiple listing services throughout the United States. With those partnerships, about two-thirds of all REALTORS® are able to access RPR as of mid-October, 2012.
Even with that high level of access, as a member benefit, part of RPR’s core mission is to deliver this technology to all of NAR’s 1,000,000 REALTORS®. This is important because it allows “all members to take advantage of RPR’s high value tools, features and reporting capabilities,” says Dale Ross, CEO of RPR. To that end, RPR has announced that they are making the system available to all REALTORS® on Nov. 1, 2012.
“The RPR team is very excited about the opportunity to bring RPR to markets which have been waiting for access to the system,” adds Jeff Young, RPR senior vice president of operations. “We’ve been telling members for months that the wait is almost over.”
So what can RPR do for REALTORS®? Here are just three advantages it can provide:
1. Generate data-rich reports: RPR collects loads of data on individual properties and their surrounding communities. You can use the system to generate custom reports that can include as much of this information as your clients want. “I have never heard of any buyers and sellers who do not like the reports,” Ross says.
2. Connect with younger consumers: Homebuyers and sellers from generations X and Y are doing the majority of their property researching online, often before they contact a real estate practitioner. When they do reach out to agents, these consumers expect them to be able to immediately provide even more valuable information on certain homes. With its extensive yet user-friendly database, RPR allows REALTORS® to do just that. “REALTORS® who use RPR will certainly have more information on properties than consumers who do research online,” Ross says.
3. Provide insight into property values: With the fluctuating housing market during the past few years, it is often difficult to get a handle on a home’s value at any given time. But with RPR’s Realtor Valuation Model® (RVM), users of this system will have an authoritative source with which to provide information about property values using tax information, sale history, and comparables and other data sets. “RPR’s RVM offers best-in-class automated valuations which REALTORS® can refine with their local market knowledge to make it even more accurate,” Ross says.
Want to learn more about how RPR can benefit your business? Go to http://blog.narrpr.com/national-launch. Also, be sure to register for a free REALTOR® Magazine webinar, “A Look Ahead: RPR’s Launch to All REALTORS®,” taking place this Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012.
UPDATE: The webinar is now archived. Go here to download or playback the event recording.
Miami is known for its colorful vibrancy, but 23,000 vacant condos put a dark cloud over the south Florida market at its peak inventory in 2008. Do you know what happened? They’ve all sold — largely due to the purchasing power of international investors.
As foreign buyers’ interest in U.S. real estate continues to surge, REALTORS® are seizing this opportunity and arming themselves with education.
CIPS course at the Chicago Association of REALTORS®
A window into this trend could be seen in Chicago this week as about 20 REALTOR® students, some who traveled from several states away, attended the Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS) course at the Chicago Association of REALTORS®. I had the pleasure of sitting in on the first day as instructor David Wyant of Wyant Realty and Across Borders School of Real Estate in Ormond Beach, Fla., covered local markets. CIPS is a real estate designation that has seen exponential growth, with more than 2,000 recipients and courses taught in 50 countries.
Why are foreign buyers eyeing the U.S. real estate market?
Is it because the value of the dollar has fallen? Yes, the lower dollar value equals deals for foreign buyers. But according to Wyant, that’s one reason among many.
“Investing in real estate is great for individuals and for sovereign nations,” Wyant explained. “Real estate has its ups and downs, but it’s never worth nothing. It’s tangible, it holds its value and it’s around for a long time.”
Of all the countries in the world, the U.S. is still leading the way in providing the most stable and secure real estate investment environment, above Germany, Canada, France, Australia and the UK. Why? The stability of the economy and laws the U.S. has protecting private property rights. “That means a lot if you’ve ever had anything taken away from you,” Wyant said.
The internet has helped quicken globalization. It’s led to the migration of jobs across borders, and as countries evolve and economies diversify or move from farming to industry, creative centers have emerged and trade has expanded. Sunsetting tariffs, 24-hour markets, ease of air travel, and countries specializing in specific industries and trades have all contributed to globalization.
Who’s buying in the U.S.? Continue reading »
When Paul Yorkis was young, his mother took him to the Democratic Party headquarters and asked him to stuff envelopes in support of Adlai Stevenson who ran for president twice during the 1950s.
“It was fun and people were happy I was there,” said Yorkis, president of Patriot Real Estate in Medway Mass., a member of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee, a Democratic National Convention delegate, and national chair of the non-NAR affiliated REALTORS® for Obama.
That experience as a child was formative for Yorkis, who continued to explain that politics is deeply rooted in the lives and culture of those living in his home state of Massachusetts. “In Massachusetts, there’s a few sports – the Red Sox, the New England Patriots, the Bruins, the Celtics, and the other sport is politics.”
Yorkis decided to become a delegate representing Massachusetts at the DNC in Charlotte, N.C., last week, because real estate – among other issues – needs to be represented and addressed at the federal level. He knows how important it is to keep housing front and center when talking to lawmakers – especially the accessibility of the American dream of home ownership, as Yorkis himself experienced homelessness for a short time as a child.
“REALTORS® do amazing things. The reason I’m at the convention is because I believe it’s the little stuff that has the ability to impact politics,” Yorkis said.
Yorkis did leave his mark at the DNC. He submitted testimony to the drafting and platform committee of the Democratic National Committee. Part of the platform deals with housing and the last sentence of the approved platform was adapted from Yorkis’s testimony. It states: “The president remains committed to creating an economy that’s built to last, where home ownership is an achievable dream for all Americans.
Yorkis was one of approximately 20 REALTORS® who served as delegates at the DNC this year. This video looks at how members of the National Association of REALTORS® had an impact that the convention and why political involvement – whether it be Republican or Democratic – is vital to the real estate industry.
By Wendy Cole, Managing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
I just returned from ten days in Cuba. It was a personal trip that offered a fascinating glimpse into one of the country’s great conundrums: how to balance people’s desire for greater economic freedom without compromising the country’s deeply-held socialist principles. My visit, as part of a group, was enabled by the “people-to-people” license program restarted last fall by the Obama Administration. (Such visits to the island-nation are designed to foster meaningful cultural exchange between U.S. citizens and Cubans. They were initiated during the Clinton years and suspended while Bush was in the White House.)
I was particularly intrigued to see how Cuba’s new property law that allows citizens and permanent residents to buy and sell real estate was playing out. Ushered in with much fanfare in November, this market-oriented reform is a major shift from a half-century of socialist, state-run housing policies.
What’s evident wherever you go in the country (and we traveled to five cities): The housing stock is aging and badly decaying. The 50-year trade embargo with the United States and the loss of the Soviet safety net in 1991 mean Cubans must make do with what they have or can make, notwithstanding the contributions from the few countries they maintain economic ties with. (Plywood and light bulbs are sorely needed, for example.) Still, the beauty of the neo-gothic, colonial architecture still comes through in many places, along with the peeling paint and crumbling walls.
Our personable and knowledgeable guide, Mirelys Gonzalez, is a typical Cuban home owner. She lives with her husband and five-year-old daughter in a two-bedroom flat, constructed on top of the Havana home she grew up in. The extreme housing shortage means that multi-generational living arrangements are quite common. It also means that divorcing couples are more apt to erect a wall within the home they have shared and continue to occupy the same property long after the marriage has ended. The reason for all this togetherness is that no one can be assured of finding a new affordable place to live. Continue reading »
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