If you continue to use your market keywords in your blog post titles and opening sentences, Google will bring visitors to your real estate blog. But don’t rely exclusively on the Google gods to bring you potential clients. Be proactive. Attract readers by leaving comments and joining online conversations.

Leave comments, with links to your blog, on:

• Other blogs, especially high profile ones
• Consumer forums
• Social networks, such as Twitter
• Mainstream media online news stories, especially your local paper
• Any websites that allow comments

The two keys to conversational marketing are (1) intelligent comments and (2) links to your blog. The comments will arouse interest “Who is this person leaving these brilliant comments?” and the link will take readers to your real estate blog.

Blogging Tip courtesy of the HomeGain Blogging School Professor, Joseph Ferrara. Sign up for AgentView and the HomeGain Blogging School.

Market update provided by Mario Greco of the Mario Greco Group, Rubloff Residential Properties, in Chicago, Illinois.

It’s no surprise that the last four tumultuous weeks on Wall Street have changed the entire landscape of the residential real estate market. Unfortunately, the hysteria surrounding the plummeting stock market has spread to and infected the Chicago housing market.

Simply put, it’s been a whole new (mental) ball game since Sept. 15.

I think it’s important for home sellers to understand how the turmoil on Wall Street has affected the Chicago real estate market. In a word, the uncertainty has caused a paralysis in our local market. The traditional three – or, depending on how you look at it, four – groups of buyers still exist today, as they always have.

The first group is made up of those home buyers who have the cash or credit to buy, but are scared to make a move. The members of this group are sitting on their hands, much like the banks are. The second group is made up of buyers who were on the fence either in desire or ability and are not buying now. They, instead, are waiting to see what happens before they make any move. The third group includes those buyers who couldn’t or didn’t want to buy. Well, they’re still on the sidelines, either by force or by choice. Even the fourth group, the vultures, can’t buy because banks aren’t lending money for most deals, let alone those that are risky.

As a result, deals are slow to materialize and those that already have been struck are being renegotiated or

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I recently read an article at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which attempted to link foreclosures and home values. The statistics cited in the article concluded that foreclosures are not affecting home values very much and that there are only a dozen or so states with enough foreclosures to induce price drops of 6 percent or more.

The article made it seem as if this was an insignificant number. I disagree that a 6 percent drop in prices in a dozen states due to foreclosures is insignificant, but, I do agree with the premise of the article to a degree – I was unable to find any real loss of value on the whole that was directly related to foreclosures.

I’m also always skeptical of “national” studies in which home values are cited because they are almost always off. As an example, I recently read an article in Forbes which ranked the most expensive ZIP codes around the country. I found the ZIP code here in Atlanta that was in the report to be off by about 30% according to my local MLS – I’m sure it’s more accurate than their numbers. With that in mind, I thought it might be worthwhile to look at a local level and see if I could determine if foreclosures are affecting local home values. I was unable to see that there was a discernable price drop, be it direct or indirect, of home values due to foreclosures.

The methodology I used was to take an area of Atlanta and looked at sales data quarter by quarter with and then without the foreclosures as a baseline from Q1 and Q2 of 2007 and 2008. There was no discernable difference in home values, but, there really weren’t enough closed foreclosures to make much of a difference anyway. That said, what I did find, did not support the idea that foreclosures are bringing down the rest of the neighborhood. So, the next thing that I did was

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Certainly there is a lot of grim news out there - but things are not that bad.  Actually, I have not noticed any difference in my daily life or that of most people that I have come in contact with since this “financial crisis” has begun.  Sometimes I think that the news people like to jump on the bandwagon and are going out of their way to find and report bad news.  After you report on it enough, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Strangely enough, year to date, this has been my best year of my 23 years in real estate.  There are still  a lot of people out there who want to buy homes.  I am finding numerous new home buyers every week.  
 
Let’s look at the home buying situation a bit closer. 

Interest rates are excellent right now, in the low 6% range, and even in the upper 5% range.  These rates are much lower than they have been during most of my career. 

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Market update provided by John Caporale, Realtor with RE/MAX Action Associates in Exton, Pennsylvania.

The Suburban Philadelphia Real Estate Market is on hold seemingly with the rest of the world as we await the proposed resolution of the credit crisis. Prior to the events of the last two weeks our region was bucking national trends with home prices increasing albeit modestly, and supply just moderately at buyer’s market levels. Supply is actually down from last year, but now, home buyers seem to be scarce as people hunker down to see how things will play out and whether mortgage money will be available.

The local economy remains bolstered by relatively low unemployment, and a considerable number of unfilled jobs, especially higher paying tech jobs.

Consumer confidence has taken its toll here as most places and so the sense is until things are much more clear in the financial markets, home buying is on temporary hiatus.

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