One of the keys to success in real estate is not one that many professionals pursue, connecting with other agents outside of their market. You may wonder why do that, after all, you’re in the business of meeting buyers and sellers in your home town. Very true and that is absolutely your first priority. But by meeting other agents, getting to know them, you will increase your business down the road through referrals.

So one of my goals is meeting new people in other areas. I started talking to David Wynn, broker for WynnDcorp Realty an International Real Estate Brokerage. You can visit their main site at http://www.wynndcorprealty.com. They have another website as well http://www.wynndcorp.com that serves global real estate buyers and sellers with USA and International properties from the Smoky Mountain Village of Maggie Valley in Western North Carolina. Their marketing  “We network the Globe” reflects exactly what I’m trying to accomplish, plus I like their mission statement: serving our clients and customers with integrity, personalized and professional services. That is exactly the type of people I’d like to network with. Since they do a lot of network based marketing, they were a natural fit, especially since they have clients from overseas and quite a few overseas investors end up buying in Las Vegas. 

One of the other great side benefits of this is that you end up meeting some great people. And I think you can never have to many friends.

I was checking out some sites in Southern California. Like Nevada, California has a fairly high number of foreclosures happening in some areas. If you do a search for California cities that have high foreclosure rates, you’ll get quite a few results. Despite the high number of foreclosures, the southern California market is recovering. I’ve been corresponding with John Warthen, an agent in the Temecula CA real estate market. He is seeing lots of buyers and more importantly, dropping inventory levels.

That really is the key. People are still buying property, but with super high inventory levels the media has a field day (which of course is great for them, bad news gets ratings). California had some of the highest rates in the nation, so if that market is recovering this soon, its great news for the rest of the country.

According to a recent article by Barron’s, the real estate slump may be over sooner then we think.  Despite the record number of foreclosures and homes on the market, and widely ignored in the media, was the news that home prices actually rose, (slightly) between March and April, in eight of the 20 markets covered by the S&P/Case-Shiller Index (Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Ore., and Seattle). Prices of Las Vegas homes and Henderson NV real estate in several areas of both cities have also gone up slightly.

I think part of the reason for the stabilization is a flood of overseas investors and second home buyers. The weak dollar combined with the fire sale of US real estate has drawn foreign investors in large numbers. Homes that were selling for over half a million dollars are now selling for just over $300,000. Builders are giving away upgrades and providing super low interest fixed rate loans just to move their inventory.

The other part of the equation are areas that didn’t experience a boom. Those markets remained fairly stable, experiencing neither an up or downward trend in inventory and pricing. There have been some experts recommending buying now. Time magazine ran an article in February urging buyers not to wait. MSN real estate ran a similar piece recently, stating five reasons to buy now.

With interest rates at  historic low and an oversupply of homes on the market, there hasn’t been a better time in recent history to purchase a home.

If you are a frequent visitor of the Bloodhound blog or Active Rain, you’ve probably read about the ongoing saga of ePerks suing a blogger because they are unhappy with his posts.  Having read several posts about the company as well as feedback by some of their customers, I have to wonder exactly what the hell they are thinking. 

Do yourself and your company a favor. Drop the lawsuit, issue a statement that you overreacted and then hire a PR firm that specializes in reputation management to clean up the toxic waste dump that was your reputation.  Trying to sue someone because you don’t agree with their opinion is not going to help your business, especially when you are suing the exact demographic that you target for your business. The damage done may be irreversible by this point.

Think about it from a Realtor’s point of view. You have a company that has some negative feedback (almost all do, regardless of the service they provide). Most companies would shrug it off, or if they are forward thinking, try to fix it and make the company better.  Then there are those that try to squash any criticism, earned or otherwise, using schoolyard bullying tactics to intimidate the problem away.  Here is the clue you apparently don’t have, NO ONE LIKES A BULLY. David wins against Goliath.

You can read the rest of the saga here.

Other posts about Vlad:

• Andy Beard
• Greg Swann
• Agent Genius
• Marlow Harris
• Mary McKnight
• Hunter Jackson
• Teri Lussier

This is taken from a press release by Meritage Homes Corporation:

FIRST QUARTER 2008 HIGHLIGHTS:
– Generated approximately $80M positive cash flow from operations
– Paid down debt by $80M, nearly eliminating outstanding bank debt
– 47% net debt-to-capital ratio; $377M available borrowing capacity at quarter-end
– Reduced inventory of unsold homes by 31% to 768 at quarter-end
– Reduced total lot supply to 24,591 lots, or 3.4 years supply, with 60% optioned
– Backlog increased 13% to 2,594 contracts, from 2,288 at year-end 2007

Despite a slowly recovering market, its not doom and gloom for some home builders despite the reported losses. This is a quote from the press release:

“We made significant progress on our objectives again this quarter, strengthening our balance sheet and improving our liquidity,” said Steven J. Hilton, chairman and CEO of Meritage Homes. “We generated significant positive cash flow, paid off nearly all of our bank debt, reduced our inventory of unsold homes, kept lot purchases below home starts and further reduced our total lot supply. We maintained compliance with all of our debt covenants, and believe we’ve demonstrated disciplined financial management with the tremendous strides we’ve made over the last nine months.”

Clearly Meritage Homes in the market for the long haul. They have several communities in Nevada, the most notable are located in the master planned community of Mountain’s Edge in Las Vegas and Inspirada in Henderson. The Yellowstone community with five neighborhoods and the smaller Summer Trail are still under construction in some areas.  However, Meritage Homes credits the Texas market for their numbers.

In addition to lowering their inventory across the country, Meritage Homes completed an offering of common stock on April 25th of approximately 4.3 million shares. The offering raised an additional $83 million (net commissions). It seems that potential new home buyers could do a lot worse than buying a  new home from Meritage homes. They look like they are planning on being around for a long, long time.

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For the past six years, one company has continued to be the globally recognized brand name for commercial real estate, CB Richard Ellis. So it was no surprise that out of the more than 20,000 surveyed real estate professionals one name came out on top again—CB Richard Ellis. The company has continued to dominate the commercial market in name recognition despite increased competition in that sector.

CB Richard Ellis has over 300 offices in 50 countries which has made them a leader in global commercial real estate.