In January I returned from the Inman Connect Conference and the ReBarCamp in New York City and had the opportunity to talk to people from all over the country about the real estate industry.

As is the case in a lot of conferences, there was substantial social interaction as well as business networking, but since its January and we’re all creatures of habit – the first question on everyone’s lips was “How did you do last year?”. My answer was always the same, “We’re doing better, but its still not where I want it to be”.

I had to leave the Inman Conference and return to Philadelphia because I had a meeting today with our company’s Sales Managers. In preparation I did a little research so we could talk about how to improve our company’s productivity for the coming year. And I received quite a shock. I found out that I had unwittingly told a little white lie – and because being truthful is really important to me  I want to take the opportunity to apologize right here and right now to my team at CENTURY 21 Adantage Gold.

When I checked the Century 21 corporate web site to see how our company had performed in the comparison to other Century 21 firms in the country, I found that what I thought was actually wrong – we were doing pretty well in a challenging market.;

1. We were in the Top 5 companies in Pennsylvania based upon the amount of Gross Commission earned,
2. We were in the Top 3 companies in Pennsylvania based upon the number of properties we sold.
3. We were in the Top 100 Century 21 companies in the entire country based upon the amount of Gross Commission earned, and
4. We were in the top 67 Century 21 companies in the entire country based upon the amount of properties sold (out of a system with thousands of companies across the United States)

I wasn’t really displeased with the reality, I am just upset that I spoke without having the facts at my disposal. I am really big about writing what you know, not what you think when it comes to blogging , and the same rule should apply to all of our communication. When we speak from impressions rather than facts, we create false impressions – not the least of which take root in our own thoughts impacting our actions and decisions.

As we approach the end of the Tax Credit (About 34 days are left for people to buy), I wonder what we will learn on May 1, 2010. Will we learn that the tax credit was supporting our current activity? Will we learn that the market has recovered enough for the spring to have a reasonable aactivity level of its own? Will we learn that there are enough investors buying homes again that the REO inventory will diminish? What is reality telling you in your market?

In a recent search, I noticed a post by another brokerage firm about a relationship with RealtyTrac that was promulgated by their national franchise. .

It reminded me why I hate salespeople sometimes.

This post would indicate to a real estate consumer that the agent and firm had some benefit through the publication of their third party information, and that this would make them some kind of foreclosure experts. And while the writer is a pleasant enough person, and just trying to create a business advantage for themselves, its just nonsense, and its frankly misleading – though I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is unintentionally misleading.

I have been selling foreclosures for 21 years in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester Counties, and for the past year or two also in Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties in New Jersey. I have also been an active real estate investor for even longer than that, so I think that I would be considered an expert in the marketing, purchase and sale of foreclosure properties. From my experience I know that , for the most part third party relationships like the one touted by this broker don’t work. And I know that for the past 21 years, most of the calls from services like these that I received were from people that were calling on outdated properties that were published long after they were sold and settled.

Third party listings of foreclosures have a number of problems. As I mentioned, their information is often outdated.They often provide too much information seeming to provide value but muddying the waters for most consumers – for example “pre-foreclosure” data which is useless to most of their subscribers. The source of the information is not disclosed in many instances, and is therefore questionable. For real estate professionals, the third party information is less accurate than the Multiple Listing Service .

I understand the need for the third party company to sell subscriptions, and their right to advertise and boast about their services to do so. And I understand the need for the national franchise to create affiliate relationships to obtain income opportunities and to position themselves as providing value to their franchisees, I even understand the writer pimping this out as a benefit to the public – but it is indicative of their lack of understanding about the product and the foreclosure product that they even do so. It just burns me up that they are so busy posting something to appear at the front of the pack, that they don’t take the time to actually determine if it accomplishes that before they publish.

As salespeople I think we have an obligation to balance our need to market with the need to be genuine and transparent. Its too easy to lay claim to expertise when you’re writing alone in your home or office. Don’t just claim a position, have the position. Be the expert you claim to be – or claim to be the expert you are.

Here’s a surefire way to start an argument: Suggest that the housing market has reached bottom. To be sure, the near-term outlook is still grim, and nobody is forecasting a rapid nationwide rebound. But there are signs that the overbuilding and speculative pricing that inflated the bubble are working their way through the system. In October 2005, near the peak of the boom, the median sales price for a U.S. home reached 7.3 times per capita income; by this May it had fallen to 5.7, in line with historical norms. Nationally, the rate of decline in sales is slowing, and in some regions sales numbers have actually perked up. “The indicators are starting to look better,” says Adam York, an economic analyst with Wachovia.ELYAC Realty Los Angeles Real Estate Agent, Home Loans, Mortgage Brokers, Oct 2008

It sort of amazes me that it takes a broker in one of the most challenged markets in the country to write about how the market may be turning around, and talking about how the market in Philadelphia has been listed as one of the 7 markets in the country poised for recovery. Just goes to show that though the real estate market may be local, the real estate media is certainly national in today’s world.

You should read the whole article.

I love being from Philadelphia. It is a place of opportunity. As an example, when I was kid I touched the Liberty Bell. Like uncounted Philadelphia children before me, I walked right up to it, and stuck my little fingers in the crack, below the bolt holding the crack from widening. I still remember the cold feel of the metal and the angled metal of the crack. It was a school trip to Independence Hall, the former Pennsylvania State House, and coincidentally the place where the Second Continental Congress met , and ratified the Declaration of Independence on July 4th her, 1776.

It didn’t mean much to my family when it happened, because they were is different parts of Eastern Europe living lives that ranged from tough to marginal to unbearable. About 100 years later however, the actions of those men, in that place, meant they had an option. There was a place where they could live their lives as they wished, raise their children, and succeed if they worked hard. So they came to what they called the Golden Medina (the Golden Country). They worked hard, they learned English, and they raised their children to love their adopted country. And love it they did, with a deep and abiding passion that impelled them to make sacrifices in defense of the country when called on, and to pass that passion on to their children and Grandchildren.

Its July 4th, and I’m feeling real grateful and sentimental. I’m spending the weekend on holiday, celebrating our country’s birthday with millions of my fellow Americans. I was on the road to the New Jersey shore yesterday behind a car with a bumper sticker that said “My son’s a Marine – Sleep Well America, He’s Got your Back!”.

It made me want to call every person serving in our armed forces and thank them personally for allowing me to live in a place where my daily concerns revolve around whether Twitter is working well, or if duplicate blogs are a problem, or buying blog content is a difficult moral issue. I need to thank them for allowing me the privilege of living in a place where getting dressed well and going into an air conditioned office is considered hard work, and where I can whine about single digit mortgage rates.

Its easy to take for granted where we live ,how we live, and the rights we enjoy every day without thinking. And with gas at record prices and a tough economy, every day can be a challenge. But under the worst of circumstances we still live in the best place in the world. A place where we can speak, blog, and create as we wish. A place where home ownership is achieved by a huge number of our citizens, and everyone has potential to achieve and excel that is matched in few places around the world.

As a favor to me , just for today, be grateful for what we have and the opportunities that await us in the future. After traveling to many wonderful places in the world, I truly believe that we live in one of the best places anywhere with a system, that no matter how imperfect, beats the pants off the alternatives, – and it all started in Philadelphia.

Happy Birthday Everyone – Hope We all share lots more of these.

As people in the real estate industry talk about blogs, it seemed to me that agents would find it easier to start blogging about who they are and what they know if they didn’t have to learn it all on their own, and maintain a rapid pace of writing from the very start. In a recent post at AgentGenius  there was some conversation about BINOs (Bloggers In Name Only). People that create a blog, but don’t do sufficient writing or promotion to maintain the blog and achieve enough recognition from the consumer and other professionals to make the Blog a success in terms of consistent readership.  It would seem that part of the problem is that there is a lot to learn in publishing a blog, unless it is satisfying some literary compulsion to write on a daily basis.

 My experience was different. While I was a BINO with an abortive ActiveRain Blog, and a post or two written on a Blogger platform, my real writing experience started with Agent Genius, through commenting, and a gracious invitation from Lain Anglin-Rosales and Benn Rosales to write for AgentGenius. AgentGenius,  though certainly not a place for most people to start writing, is a great place to write for me because there is a sense of community, a flow of ideas from different places. Differing points of view, differing styles of writing, different areas of expertise. Ideas flow to write a new post from one you have read or a conversation that started between two other people.

Though much of our job as real estate professionals is still the same as it has been for years,Social Media is obviously the newest communication frontier for  technologically comfortable consumers. Because of that it is important to have the agents at CENTURY 21 Advantage Gold participating in that arena.  The question was how to accomplish that.

There were a number of challenges. One was the unfamiliarity of our agents with Blogging. We don’t live in Virginia or Arizona or California, or St. Paul (home to Teresa Boardman and BoomerJack Boardman) where Blogging is old hat and more generally accepted because of the experience and visibility of well known participants in New Media. So the question was, how do we encourage our agents to Blog and help them reach effective standards while presenting an accurate representation of both our company and our agents?

Having started using WordPress, the solution presented itself in the ability to add contributors or authors to individual blogs. And so C21AGVoices was born. We asked several technologically advanced agents to participate and several managers and partners. Each was asked to write at least one post each week, hoping  that as the Blog gained more readership within the company, new participants would present themselves.

The basics standards of the posts are simple, and are maintained by reviewing the Blogs before posting. This is less for the purpose of moderating the content then it is to help the new writers achieve style, be consistent in spelling and grammar, helping with addition of graphics and educating the fledgling authors in the perks and quirks of using Wordpress. Comments are not moderated at this point, andthere is no plan to do so, though  that may change as the blog grows. Then again, it may not.  If the contributors like the process, they may begin to publish their own Blogs and will grow in the world of Social Media. If that happens, the project has been succesful. If that does not happen, but our company had a Social Media platform for agents to utilize, that is also a desirable conclusion.

C21AGVoices may be one of the first Blogs of its type, at least in the real estate industry because it is created be the company rather then a third party, and was built like Jay Thompson’s  company blog (apology to Jay but I couldn’t find the post announcing it, so this link is to his personal blog).  Please take the time to stop by and meet CENTURY 21 Advantage Gold’s Bloggers, and provide your input here. Its an experiment in progress and your help, questions and ideas are all welcome!