These are the words that my first broker had for me after I closed my first deal. As luck would have it, I was in for quite the ride for my first deal and at times I thought there was no way I could actually get it closed and even worse, there was no one or nowhere I could turn for all of the answers.

It involved foreign terms to me at the time like elevation certificates, flood plains and settlement statements. Most of us who have done this for a while have had transactions where we just thought the changes would never end, but, when my broker told me “every deal was different,” I thought twice before continuing on in my real estate career.

Surely things wouldn’t always be different and if they were, I would never be able to learn enough about how to be a great real estate agent so I might as well quit now!

If you are a new agent, there is no need to have the fear I had. Instead, think of the fact that every deal is different as a blessing. Every new transaction will open up for you new and creative ways to make transactions work.

Even as real estate agents (not brokers) what we are really doing is “brokering” a transaction between a buyer and a seller.

In today’s market, things can often times become more complicated than in the past because of fickle buyers, short sales, foreclosures and wounded sellers who have seen their retirement accounts slide away right alongside the equity in their homes. These situations can make real estate in today’s environment tricky and deals harder to hold together.

Frequently, less than usual situations risk tearing apart transactions that sometimes seem only to be held together by our will. Continue reading this post

Congrats to HomeGain’s Max Mobile in the NYC area for winning “Best Decal” on August 17, 2009 at Metro Auto Squad’s Street Wheels’ show!

HomeGain Max Mobile driving around Times Square in New York City.

‘Best Decal’ was a new award for Metro Auto Squad. “All the attention was on our car,” said the Max Mobile driver.  “The gorilla made it a must see for everyone that were in attendance, especially children.”

The driver added: “Driving an ad car for the past six months has taken some getting use to, but I now love waving at everyone on the road.”

Follow Max

Max adventures include:

• San Diego, California
• New York City
• India
• Orlando, Florida
• San Antonio, Texas
• San Francisco, California
• Phoenix, Arizona
• Paris, France

Photo compliments of Matt Everett at Go Auto Ads.

There are a few open slots for tomorrow’s webinar!

Join us for an exclusive Professional Education for Real Estate Brokers webinar, titled: “Online Marketing Terms, Tactics, and Tips to Survive”.

Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Time: 10am PST / 1pm EST

Cost: No Charge

This 45 minute online real estate seminar will cover Broker best practices in online marketing to gain business from the growing numbers of online buyers and sellers.

You will learn how to:

1. Increase your marketing success online.
2. Determine what online buyers and sellers are seeking (and what they hate!).
3. Evaluate and differentiate online marketing.
4. Explain online marketing terminology (such as SEO, SEM, SERP, and SMM). Understand how each term can affect your business.
5. Increase recruiting, retention and transactions for your office.

Continue reading this post

Green is the New Black

The housing industry hasn’t developed a reliable way of breaking down green versus conventional homes sales figures. But its clearly a hot button issue and will even become more important, perhaps mandatory, as we begin to seriously deal with global warming.

What Others are Saying….

Developers
“Those builders are seeing that they’ll get more buyers coming to their developments when they have solar. They sell like hot cakes,” Bernadette del Chiaro, an energy specialist at the advocacy group Environment California, told the Los Angeles Times. The Times also quoted Julie Blumden, a vice president at San Jose-based solar tile maker SunPower Corp., as pointing out that the increase in sales velocity is actually paying for the solar systems.

MLS
At least one MLS listing service is updating its database to allow for property searches based on a range of green features.

National Association of Realtors®
According to a recent NAR survey, 90 percent of recent home buyers thought energy efficiency was a very important consideration when searching for a home, and the demand for green buildings and environmentally sensitive home features is growing.

HomeGain
Arbor National Mortgage & American Forests notes that 83% of Realtors believe that mature trees have a ’strong or moderate impact’ on the saleability of homes listed for under $150,000; on homes over $250,000, this perception increases to 98%. This survey is supported by observations from the USDA Forest Service: mature trees add an average of 10 percent to a property’s value. Continue reading this post

Congratulations to  Danielle Boling CRS, CNHS, AHS, ABR, HHS of Network Real Estate Partners in Texas for being the next $50 winner of the HomeGain Agent Appreciation contest!

Danielle is an AgentEvaluator Platinum Club Member and has been with HomeGain since 2007.

The 6 correct answers from the Word Search Contest were:

• AgentView
• Homegain
• Success
• Leads
• Thanks
• Realtor

Next week’s new contest starts on Monday! Are you good at comparing photos? Might be worth the $50!

Login to your HomeGain account on Monday and Tuesday (and make sure you have your pop up blocker off) to get the link to the Agent Appreciation page.

Or email us.

This exclusive real estate video features Eric Blackwell, Director of Technology at RE/MAX who presented a special session at the August 2009 HomeGain Nation Live Real Estate Forum in San Francisco titled “SEO Is A Team Sport”.

Did you put SEO or getting better ranking as a priority for your business this year? What is SEO? Why do search engines put some REALTORS® at the top of search results over others?

SEO is the role that relationships play in helping you get to the top — being “search engine friendly”. Blackwell explains all this and more for what SEO means to REALTORS®, and provides the basic rules of effective SEO strategies.

Watch the SEO TRENDS session video: “SEO Is A Team Sport”

Check back next week to see one more video from this 2009 real estate event, which is the “Trends In Real Estate Marketing” with power presenters Robert Hahn, Patrick Kitano, Jay Thompson, Joseph Ferrara and Louis Cammarosano!

Watch more HomeGain Nation session videos

Also see more HomeGain Nation real estate videos on the HomeGain YouTube channel, on the HomeGain Nation Blog. and in the HomeGain Media Center.