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Researchers Note Trends, Marketing Implications, for Real Estate Agents

The Director of the Keller Center for Research in Residential Real Estate Marketing at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, Dr. Chris Pullig, sales are on the decline there has only been a marginal reduction in National Association of Realtors (NAR) membership, hence fewer transactions are available to each individual agent noted today that while existing home.

In the mid-1990s and continued through the first half of this decade, during the recent housing boom NAR membership nearly doubled from 729,266 in 1993 to 1.27 million as of 2005. The number of real estate agents continued to rise, as the number of homes sold shifted downward in 2006.

Solar energy part 2

How exactly do these solar powered homes operate anyway? For starters, one must get to know the basics. There are two uses that solar collecting systems are usually used for: one is for thermal heating, the other is for gathering readily usable electrical energy.

Since the sun provides heat and light, the two energies can be fully harnessed for their different potentials. This is a good thing for homes, especially those which are situated in the cold regions. Not only do they get free electricity, they also save on it by heating up the house’ various elements through conducting the solar heat into various heat transfer systems.

Recession is now in order

In the US Economy, more and more students will join the workforce in the months to come; problem is, recession is in order, and add this impending problem to the impending credit card debt and other collaterals these youth and soon-to-be members of the workforce have, it will be really hard for these fresh grads to stand up and make a living for their own.

And with the economists calling for a recession, lay-offs in the workforce are really happening, and it will be very hard for the youth to find a high-paying, full-time job. And in effect, new meat will have to settle for low-paying, part-time jobs for now.

Solar heat energy

A very good example of houses that fully utilize the sun’s heat energy can be found mostly in Japan. In the cold winter months when most Japanese people would rather turn up the heat in their cozy homes, this solar heat capturing system works wonders in heating up the radiant flooring, the water systems, etc.

To make this possible, heat transfer is conducted by a conduit, eg. circulating water, air, or antifreeze, pumped through pipes. The conduit is heated by the sun. Further heating can be achieved through the greenhouse effect, by trapping heat inside a glass like structure and allowing the extra heat to warm the conduit.

Housing market Growth

The money magazine has made exclusive forecasts, with the generous help of the Moody’s economy.com and Fiserv Lending solutions, on 380 housing markets including New York, Las Vega, Los Angeles, Montgomery, Prescott, San Francisco, Honolulu, Cambridge and United States.

They say that there is a 3.5 percent increase in the prices of single-family houses from June 2006 to June 2007. David Stiff, the chief economist of Fiserv, stated that it is a decent increase though it is still less than the half of last year’s clip and it is under 10% of the annual rate in the past five years.

Lending Survey Indicates Tightened Standards, Lower Demand

The Federal Reserve has released the October 2007 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices which addresses changes in the supply of and demand for bank loans both to businesses and consumers over the previous three months which, we presume, corresponds to the third quarter of 2007. In this particular survey participating banks were questioned about changes in their lending policies for backup lines of credit for commercial paper and prime nonconforming residential mortgage loans. Banks were asked separately about changes in credit standards and demand for prime, nontraditional, and subprime residential mortgages. The report summarizes responses from 52 domestic banks and 22 foreign banking institutions, a respondent pool which accounts for the majority of the bank lending in the country.

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A Reference on Real Trends

Leaders of the residential real estate industry can find useful, timely and trusted information from REAL Trends, which for twenty years, have been able to give answers to business and strategy questions, either from newsletters, e-mail updates and conferences they organized. These have been combined now and can be accessed in the website, with contents as far back as 7 years ago. These include conference presentations, research reports from REAL Trends and other sources. Be updated and read the news of the day. One of the most important responsibilities of REAL TRENDS is do the research but deliver only information that are relevant to their readers, a promise to their clients, customers and friends.

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Getting the Edge in an Ugly Real Estate Market

It doesn’t really make a difference which survey you read, but similar to the annual poll done by Harris Interactive, real estate agents almost always find themselves at the bottom of the “most prestigious” occupations list.

The Ugly Truth
Why? It would seem that many of the best-paying jobs actually rank as the least prestigious -business executive, stockbroker and real estate agent – but to come in dead last with almost one-third of respondents rating real estate agents as having “hardly any prestige at all” is not good.
We need to collectively do something about it. And just changing our title from real estate agent to sales associates to Realtor(r) isn’t really going to make any meaningful difference.

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Real Estate Change: Bubble Trouble (Again?)

For real estate professionals there are lessons to be learned from every changing market condition; especially a housing bubble. The question is will they? For a great many agents who have never experienced anything other than the recent feeding frenzy this is the first time they�ll be learning them and for the rest who have �been there before�, it�s a time to reflect on the last time through the cycle and add the new lessons learned.

The housing bubble expanded in the first few years of the 2000s, especially in the costal areas, the southwest and the highly populous areas. The bubble is basically a period during which a mania for home buying occurs. In Read the rest…

US Commercial Real Estate Industry

Commercial real estate in the United States is a billion dollar industry. Each day brokers and agents provide thousands of transactions to investors and buyers in a market that fluctuates as the economy does. In the United States, alone, property values have suffered as the rise and fall of the global economy does. With outsourcing to minimize expenses, property used for commercial development has taken a major hit and has some experts wondering if there will be a rebound.

Every city or town has zoning laws that dictate what can be used as residential property and what is considered commercial real estate in an area. These areas can differ by only a few feet but the taxes and property value are drastically different. Whereas a 1200 square foot housing property might lease for nine hundred dollars, the same equivalent in a commercial area might go upwards of fifteen hundred. Real estate investors take this into consideration when searching for commercial real estate properties.

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