I’ve been traveling pretty much nonstop since attending the best event on the real estate conference calendar: RETechSouth (or RETSO for short). As always, Brad Nix, Mike Pennington, and Ben Carter (with an amazing team of people) put on a fantastic event. I did a little debate on syndication with Jay Thompson, leveraging my … Read more
Courtesy of NAR Research — one of the more valuable things on Facebook — comes this CNBC article on how investors are flooding the residential real estate market: The number of homes sold to investors more than doubled last year, as rising rents and low-priced distressed properties fueled demand. Investors, half of them using no … Read more
The Bipartisan Policy Center — a think tank based in Washington DC once described as the place “where moderate Republicans go to embrace their inner liberal” — has released a new study in conjunction with NAR, the Urban Institute, and USC that is worth reading in full if you’re interested in topics like future of … Read more
As a blogger, rather than a “credentialed journalist” (whatever that means), I have the freedom to just pass on rumors, as long as I label them as such. Well, consider this one of those rumors I have not confirmed yet. [UPDATE] I just got a second person to confirm the rumor. Two people saying … Read more
Over on Agent Genius, there’s a post about some study done as a marketing tool by Moby (the “let people know where you are” app) with REALTORS in mind. Apparently, September is “REALTOR Safety Month” at NAR, and the good folks there have put together a bunch of materials for y’all. Now, the study apparently … Read more
In Part One, we congratulated Ernie Graham and his team at SocialBios for getting acquired. I hope he picked out a nice Lamborghini Reventon in taxicab yellow. The second Curious Thing that came about just as Move was announcing its acquisition of SocialBios was the confluence of two seemingly unrelated things. Making sense out of … Read more
A mere six days ago, NAR’s Chief Economist (and my doppelganger) Lawrence Yun released this cheery video forecast on housing for the remainder of the year: Lawrence is predicting a slight pickup for 2011 over 2010; he thinks the second half of this year will be better than the second half of last year. New … Read more
The Wall Street Journal reports that rents are up and vacancies are down across the United States: Apartment landlords are enjoying rising rents and falling vacancies. The average effective rent, the amount paid after discounting, was $997 in the second quarter of the year, up from $974 a year earlier, according to a report scheduled … Read more
In the aftermath of the vote on REALTOR Party Political Survival Initiative (RPPI), NAR has released a document showing where the funds will be going (PDF). I’m not entirely sure what some of the terms mean. For example, what does “Campaign Services” cover? What is the difference between “Issue Mobilization Program” and “Issue Coordinated Campaigns”? … Read more