What do you want to accomplish with your life? How do you want to be remembered? In the end what will people say about you and more importantly what would you say about the life you lived?

I am a huge proponent of goal setting because I know that if we set goals and then work towards them it is amazing how much easier it is to reach the goals and how much easier decisions become. Every year my wife, Donna, and I write down our goals like how many transactions we want, and what we want our GCI to be, along with personal goals like family time, or exercise goals, etc. These are very effective drivers for us, and we usually achieve most of the goals we set each year and many times exceed them. As we make decisions through the year, we analyze how or if a certain decisions will help us reach our individual goals.

The fact is that most people don’t really set goals.

They make new years resolutions or wish lists, but they don’t really make well thought out goals and then plan their year’s activities to achieve those goals. The ones who do are usually top producers or top achievers in whatever endeavors they undertake. Continue reading this post

Earlier this month, HomeGain released the results of a nationwide survey of nearly 700 HomeGain current and former Realtor members. The survey asked their opinions on home prices and the impact of the Obama stimulus package.  On this real estate blog we published the national and regional results.

The HomeGain member home values survey received national coverage and the results were noted in US News, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe, Crane’s Investment News, Sellsius, Dallas Magazine, Orange County Register, RIS Media, Philadelphia Daily News, the Sarasota Herald Tribune, AOL’s Wallet Pop, St. Petersburg Times, Boston Real Estate Blog, Real Trends, Realtor Magazine, Inman News,Transparent Real Estate , Agent Genius and other blogs.

Today we are releasing the Georgia home prices survey data. In the past few weeks we published the New York, Texas, California ,Illinois and Florida data.

The Georgia Realtor home prices survey indicates that only 5% of home buyers think that homes are fairly priced vs. 18% of home buyers nationally. Thirty two percent of Georgia home buyers think that homes are overpriced by 10-20%, the same as the national average.

Conversely, 45% of Georgia home sellers, as do home sellers nationwide, believe that Realtors under valued their homes by 10-20%.

Set forth below is the Georgia home prices data with the national data in parenthesis:

Continue reading this post

We’re pleased to announce that Alan Shafran, Realtor® with Prudential California Realty, has reached the one million dollar mark in gross lifetime commissions with HomeGain’s AgentEvaluator® program!

Alan is the second real estate agent to be inducted into the HomeGain Million Dollar Club. Eric Pakulla of RE/MAX Advantage Realty in Maryland was the first AgentEvaluator member to reach the one million dollar mark in 2007.

“We are pleased that Alan and other Realtors are finding tremendous success with AgentEvaluator,” stated Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. ”Each quarter we add dozens of new members to the AgentEvaluator Silver Club ($50,000 in gross commissions from HomeGain leads), Gold Club ($75,000 in gross commissions) and Platinum Club ($125,000 in gross commissions) which now top 200, 250 and 300 members, respectively.”

“HomeGain has been instrumental to building my online business,” stated Alan Shafran. “AgentEvaluator consistently puts me in touch with home buyers and sellers in my area. HomeGain is the secret sauce to growing my client list, to closing 20 percent additional homes per year, and to making me one of the top Realtors® in the U.S.”

“The success of HomeGain members in these challenging times highlights the quality of Realtors in our network and the efficacy of our programs,” continued Louis Cammarosano. “Unlike our competitors who incessantly tout their traffic statistics, we choose instead to highlight the success of our real estate agents.”

Learn more about the AgentEvaluator marketing program for Realtors

View HomeGain 2008 AgentEvaluator Top Performers™

Read PRWeb Press Release

Real more HomeGain News

Louis Cammarosano

Homegain.com

One MILLION Dollars (Dr. Evil Clip)

$1 million may not be a lot of money to hold the world for ransom, but that’s a lot of dough for one individual real estate agent to make using HomeGain’s AgentEvaluator marketing program!

Find out tomorrow at midnight who will be the latest member to join HomeGain’s Million Dollar Club.

Louis Cammarosano

homegain.com

The San Francisco Rent Board sets price controls on residential housing effectively acting as a price ceiling, except when an apartment becomes vacant. Then the owner/manager can bring rents up to market rate. If the unit was occupied for 10 or even 20 years, eventual increases to the prevailing market rate represents a spike in cash flow.

In fact when a building with long standing tenants comes up for sale it’s a great selling point. It’s not hard to see future value when you are looking at a few units renting for $350 that would easily rent in today’s market for $1,500.

Not Everything Is Rent Controlled

In San Francisco, limits to rent increases are mandated and administered by the Rent Board with some exceptions:

1. New Construction: Mandated by state law, all building constructed after June of 1979 are exempted
2. Subsidized Housing: such as HUD housing projects.
3. Dorms, monastery’s and nunnery’s
4. Residential Hotels: If you have less than 28 days of continuous tenancy.

How it Works Continue reading this post

Bad advice number 1

“Dont pay for leads.” “You are crazy if you pay for leads.” “The leads you receive are worthless.” “You can generate your own leads if you are worth your salt in real estate.” 

I listened to this one for awhile. It did make sense, at first. I was working day and night to try to generate my own leads and I got plain burned out. So, I decided to give HomeGain a try. Technically, yes, I am paying for leads. Oh it is so nice to have leads come to me instead of spinning my wheels. Now I have time for other things like, meeting people!

Bad advice number 2

This one is very controversial. “Don’t pay for enhanced listings on Realtor.com.”

I listened to this one from some very well respected folks in the industry. Well, I got a really nice listing and I gave in and got the enhanced listing package. I grew very tired of trying to explain to sellers why their listings aren’t showing multiple pictures. “Suzy Seller down the street has an enhanced listing.” Sellers don’t care about the politics of Realtor.com. They just want to ooh and aah over the listing on Realtor.com. They will go there to check on it. Even if you give them a hundred other websites to look at, they WILL check Realtor.com. And I do get leads from Realtor.com. Good ones.

Bad advice number 3

“Blogging is a waste of time.” “You are a Realtor not a blogger.”

Ok, I admit I am not a blogger. I try to blog. I am a real estate broker who happens to blog. I blog my listings and real estate news. Maybe a few jokes and community news now and again. It is very eclectic. It is MY blog. I can do whatever I want, darn it. Now I am even blogging on multiple sites. And the sweet majic is…..SEO! Can you say number one on Google? Continue reading this post