Real Estate Blog

Let’s talk about scripts. I think they have a place in the human experience — we all use scripts every day, in both our personal and business lives. “Hi, how are you?” is a script, as is “Hi, this is Jennifer Allan with RE/MAX City Horizons; I’d like to set a showing… .” I use essentially the same script every time I go through a purchase contract with a buyer or a listing agreement with a seller. When I finish up a day of showing, I always say “So, that’s our show for today - how did we do?”

Here is the original:
Making Your Scripts Work

TORONTO, ONTARIO– (Marketwire - Oct. 17, 2008) - Activity in the Greater Toronto Area resale housing market moderated considerably during the first half of October with 2,700 homes changing hands, Toronto Real Estate Board President Maureen O’Neill announced today.

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Changing GTA Resale Housing Market Reflects Economic Times

When can you afford to be wrong?

Continued here:
Lessons Learned From The Credit Crunch: We’re On Our Own

The first quarter national report is finally out (in September) for existing condominium and cooperative sales from the National Association of Realtors and it seems condos have actually been quite resilient in an era of dropping prices and failing inventories. The NAR reports stable prices overall across the U.S., dropping an average of only 2.8 percent for the first quarter 2008, compared to the same time a year ago.

Read the original here:
Condo Trends: Nationally, Prices Hold 1Q Despite Housing Downturn

The Greater Toronto Area’s autumn resale housing market began with moderate activity, Toronto Real Estate Board President Maureen O’Neill announced last week.

The rest is here:
Greater Toronto Area Resale Housing Moderate in September

I take Time Management very seriously. I have conducted over 2,000 presentations as a professional speaker on Time Management over the last twenty years to over 100,000 people. But a good laugh now and then is as important as our serious side.

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Time Management: Twice as Much

Think about how much income you’ve lost because of your inability to persuade. How many times have you been unable to convince a good prospect to buy a home you knew met all criteria but couldn’t close the sale? I believe the way to improve sales lays in your ability to incorporate the law of contrast into your sales presentation.

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Law of Contrast

A study done by a pair of Canadian psychologists demonstrates how the law works. What the psychologists discovered is that people at a racetrack, after placing a bet, are more confident of their chance of winning than they were immediately before placing the bet. Keep in mind that nothing about the horse’s chances of winning changed. It’s the same horse, on the same track, in the same field of horses; but in the mind of the bettor, the horse’s chances of winning improve once they purchased a ticket. Although this may be a bit puzzling at first, the reason has to do with the law of consistency.

Read the original here:
Law of Consistency

TORONTO, ONTARIO– (Marketwire - Aug. 19, 2008) - The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) resale housing market remained stable throughout the first half of this month, Toronto Real Estate Board President (TREB) Maureen O’Neill announced today.

Read more from the original source:
GTA Resale Housing Remains Stable in August

Usually, when there is talk of dual agency in real estate one has in mind a situation where both buyer and seller are represented by the same agent. The problem, presumably, is that it is difficult, if not impossible, for the same agent to represent parties that have competing interests. (Note: Dual agency is not illegal, but it does require disclosure and the consent of principals.) But buyers and sellers aren’t the only ones in the marketplace who have competing interests. Consider the case of different buyers who want the same property. In some areas around the country today REO sales are eliciting multiple offers. Can the same agent represent different buyers in such situations?

See the rest here:
What if the Same Company Represents Buyers?

If you are out in the market trying to make a living in real estate, I don’t need to tell you that our industry is going through some tremendous changes right now:

Excerpt from:
Getting Back to the Basics when the Basics have Changed

One of the side effects of a slowing market is reduced liquidity. Home prices make selling less attractive, which has resulted in many people choosing to rent their homes instead. But these accidental landlords have a thing or two to learn.

Continued here:
Realty Viewpoint: Four Facts Of Life For The Accidental Landlord

It’s getting harder for you to impress buyers and sellers. Sellers are using sites like Zillow and YouTube because they can upload the same listing information as professionals can, if not better.

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Realty Viewpoint: Realty Times Asks, “Why Buy This House?”

You’re experienced. You’re good at what you do. You know real estate. You’re an expert.

Read more from the original source:
The Five Biggest Mistakes Experienced Agents Make

It’s About Soccer, Not Football

Chalking this up to weird timing, but Treasury Secretary Paulson announced plans a few weeks ago to fix the financial markets. It would take a long time to legislate and would not likely be completed before President Bush finishes up his term. What the housing market really needed back then, was leadership on solutions covering the immediate problems such as the lack of credit availability or liquidity and a US economy teetering towards a recession.

In James Surowiecki’s excellent Parsing Paulson piece in the New Yorker, he notes:

As the press has noted, the plan would consolidate our myriad and overlapping regulators into fewer, bigger ones. But the most interesting thing about it is something subtler: a push to move from our current system of regulation—often known as “rules-based”—toward a “principles-based” approach. In a rules-based system, lawmakers and regulators try to prescribe in great detail exactly what companies must and must not do to meet their obligations to shareholders and clients. In principles-based systems, which are more common in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, regulators worry less about dotted “i”s and crossed “t”s, and instead evaluate companies’ behavior according to broad principles; the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority has eleven such principles, which are often deliberately vague (“A firm must observe proper standards of market conduct”). This approach gives companies more leeway in dealing with investors and customers—not every company needs to follow the same rules on, say, financial reporting—but it also gives regulators more leeway in judging whether a company is really acting in the best interests of shareholders and consumers.

Football (Rules-based)
In a rules-based environment like Wall Street has now, there a lot of rules that the financial institutions must follow and the regulators enforce the rules. Football, like most American sports, is heavily rule-bound. There’s an elaborate rulebook that sharply limits what players can and can’t do (down to where they have to stand on the field), and its dictates are followed with great care.

Soccer (Principles-based)
The regulators have more authority to interpret and pass judgement on the activities of Wall Street. Soccer is a more principles-based game. There are fewer rules, and the referee is given far more authority than officials in most American sports to interpret them and to shape game play and outcomes. For instance, a soccer referee keeps the game time, and at game’s end has the discretion to add as many or as few minutes of extra time as he deems necessary. There’s also less obsession with precision—players making a free kick or throw-in don’t have to pinpoint exactly where it should be taken from. As long as it’s in the general vicinity of the right spot, it’s O.K.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street favors the principles-based approach rather than rules based (it’s likely to be less complex and less onerous to comply with). Paulson is an ex-Wall Streeter.

Aside

In Newsweek, one of Henry Paulson’s top Treasury Department aides spoke on how United States and world policymakers are responding to the fallout of the global credit crunch.

The short answer is that we are in the midst of a phenomenon painfully familiar to Americans. From the gold rush to the Internet bubble, cycles of innovation, excess, adaptation and recovery to a point of even greater prosperity have defined America’s economic progress. In the present situation, we are seeing the rough edges of the same recent financial innovation that has brought enormous benefits to many investors, businesses and consumers. But these net benefits are of little consolation to the Americans whose lives are being seriously disrupted by the current financial-market turmoil. In response, policymakers in the United States and around the world are taking aggressive and targeted actions to stabilize financial markets, reduce the impact of markets on the U.S. economy and protect against the same mistakes’ being repeated.

blah, blah, blah

But now, focus is shifting to correcting the problems on Wall Street with the adaptation of successful new financial products. Thats where the new solutions to the credit crisis will get interesting.

As the immediate remedies take effect, we have also begun to focus on the weaknesses in business practices of financial institutions that this experience has revealed, and on fragmented U.S. and European regulatory structures that had difficulties guarding against or responding to modern challenges. U.S. and international policymakers are acting in a targeted but comprehensive way to address the causes of current market instability with steps including strengthening the oversight of risk management and reporting practices of global financial institutions; enhancing disclosure of and the process for setting values for complex products; changing and clarifying the role and use of credit ratings; strengthening the process by which national authorities monitor and respond to risk, and reforming the mortgage-origination process. In each of these broad categories, the specific proposals are concrete, widely accepted and, in a number of cases, already being implemented by national or international authorities as well as by the private sector.

Charting the source: Where news happens… or, more accurately, where news is reported from [Reuters]

Read the original:
Paulson Proposes Principles-based Instead Of Rules-based Approach