Dear God, please let there be another oil boom, I promise not to piss it all away this time.

 

I know a lot of real estate agents and small business owners in Las Vegas that feel the same way about the real estate boom. If only they were so lucky to have their revenue equal to 2004….

Just some thoughts on another great chart that makes you go Hmmmm…

Paul Francis
Prudential Americana Group, REALTORS
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

Billion underwater?

14 Billion more is owed then what it's worth

Most striking, though, was this finding from CoreLogic: Of the 50 U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of home mortgages underwater, Las Vegas was one of only two cities where total mortgage debt for the entire metro area exceeded total property value. And Las Vegas is far worse off than the other city, Orlando, Fla.

2009 surpass previous Record

Ahhh… the memories of June of 2004. Homes selling in one day, Realtors® and their buyers scrambling to get offers in without even seeing the homes and the start of skyrocketing appreciation rates.

Put that offer in above list price to get it with no contingencies and don’t you dare ask for Too much from the sellers. These are some of the exact same things we’ve been seeing for the past couple of months (except more often then not we are dealing with banks/lenders) …. It can be quite frustrating for Las Vegas Home buyers.

It was recently confirmed by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors® and reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal that Las Vegas home resales for June of 2009 broke the sales numbers of June of 2004 that you can read here.

Something to note from the Article:

He said sales numbers would have been higher if banks had not placed a voluntary moratorium on foreclosures last year. The market should welcome the backlog of bank-owned homes that are expected to be coming soon.

Yes… there are a number of Bank Owned Homes in Las Vegas sitting on the sidelines that are not up for sale yet. Nobody seems to be able to come up with an exact number yet but I’ve heard it’s several thousand. Due to the backlog created from the foreclosure moratoriums that were in place, there are a number of bank owned homes in the process of being put up for sale. What’s interesting to note is how much of an effect this is creating on prices since the dwindling supply of Las Vegas homes that are available for sale is creating more of an urgency for buyers to buy and even bid up the prices in competing for the Las Vegas bank owned homes that are available for sale.

I’ve come across some situations in bidding wars where I really have to wonder if the other buyers had any idea that there were several more bank owned homes coming soon to the same neighborhood. Unless the banks plan on keeping them forever… they will eventually be up for sale.

Getting the Las Vegas Home you Want

Whatever happens with the Las Vegas Bank owned homes sitting on the sidelines for right now… prices are cheap and in many cases, it’s cheaper to buy then rent which is enough of a reason to buy. My suggestion to my buyers has been to pick the area you want to buy and don’t chase everything across all over Las Vegas.  Working with one Las Vegas real estate agent that has access to the Las Vegas MLS and knows how to set up the automatic searches for you is the best way to go so you can concentrate on the area you want to own in and learn all about it.

If you are searching around and you don’t have this set up for you yet… you can visit my Las Vegas Real Estate Buyers page and fill out the information on that form to start it up.

Until then… Happy Searching!

Paul Francis, CRS
Prudential Americana Group – Realtors®
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

Mixed messages

Anybody in the process of buying a home or in the real estate business knows that interest rates just jumped quite significantly. There are some mixed messages on why this took place. Some people who have not been right about too much in the past several years think it’s the beginning of signs of recovery.

Fiscal Responsibility is a Concern After All

Investors in the bond markets, where the Treasury Department goes to raise money to keep the government running, are getting skeptical about the scale of Washington’s spending. The yields on Treasury notes have risen to their highest points in five months as investors who once thronged to the safety of government debt begin to invest elsewhere.

“These increases appear to reflect concerns about large federal deficits but also other causes, including greater optimism about the economic outlook, a reversal of flight-to-quality flows and technical factors related to the hedging of mortgage holdings,” Mr. Bernanke said.

This is an interesting situation taking place and Mr. Bernanke thinks it’s because of greater economic optimism. Unfortunately, it could be a sign that foreign investors are not too keen about the Federal Reserve printing up money to buy this same debt… which the only rational reason why this would take place is if the demand was not there to begin with.

China Warns U.S. About Printing Money 05/24/09

Unless you’ve been completely ignoring who has been the big buyer of all of the U.S. Treasury Bonds for the past year to pay for all of the money being shelled out to bail everybody out… it’s been the Chinese. Uncle Charlie has been pretty generous in the rates for all of that excess money they have. Until now..

(I hope you seriously did not think that the U.S. really had all of that money sitting around.)

With an attempt to keep mortgage rates low, $8,000 first time home buyer tax credits and foreclosure moratoriums for an attempt to help the housing market, the Federal Reserve has actually been printing up money to buy U.S. Treasury Bonds to keep interest rates low. This strategy can only last for so long… When you print money and increase the supply of the currency, it obviously devalues the actual value of that currency. Countries such as Zimbabwe have tried this exact same strategy which eventually made their currency worthless.

Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

These increases appear to reflect concerns about large federal deficits, Mr. Bernanke said.

Much better… and much more honest. (Oh… don’t forget to throw in that we’ve been printing up money to buy our own debt.)

Where We Are in the Economic Cycle

It’s important to understand what happened in the first place under the Bush Administration which eventually led us to the bottom of the Austrian Business Cycle:

The theory views business cycles (which they also call credit cycles) as the inevitable consequence of inherently damaging and ineffective central bank policies, which cause interest rates to remain too low for too long, resulting in excessive credit creation, speculative >economic bubbles and lowered savings.^[2]

Combine that with lax lending standards and double the speculative economic bubble that burst… big time.

You get out of it by sacrificing… saving money and getting out of debt.

When I was in college… I think I had every credit card in existence. They just kept sending me those applications and even though I put on there I was a full time college student.. they just kept saying OK and sending me a shiny new plastic card… and then they would raise the credit limits just for making one payment on time.

Eventually… it had finally caught up to me and like many students coming out of college… I had some serious debt to pay off. I spent the next 4 years working and not spending anything on non-necessities to pay all of that debt off. It was not that much fun… but eventually ended up being very rewarding.

Today’s Economic Policy under Obama

The attempt to get out of the Austrian Business Cycle bottom is the Keynesian Economic Theory:

Keynes argued that the solution to depression was to stimulate the economy (“inducement to invest”) through some combination of two approaches: a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.^[2]

The key word here is “investment” which by my definition is a return on your money. All of the massive spending programs in place, stimulus bills, bailouts, etc… require a return on the money invested to work. This is where foreign investors such as China are looking at where their money is going towards such as GM bailouts, Performing Arts Centers and bailing out bloated governments such as California. The deficit has gotten so large that foreign investors are starting to question the policies.

Would you Lend Money on these Programs if you had better Alternatives?

This is Want I want to Drive

Should I lend $50 Billion to GM or $50 Billion to American Made Teslamotors? My money would be on Tesla Motors. Should I lend Billions to bail out companies that took on huge risks for the quick profits. What about lending money for turtle crossings, wetland restoration or to bail out California?

You really have to look at a lot of the programs that billions of borrowed dollars are going to and really wonder if there will ever be a return on the money.

Would you rather purchase Gold/Silver or Oil?

Wondering why Gas Prices have been shooting up lately? If you are following Oil, Gold and Silver… you’ve noticed prices have shot up significantly since February.

Interest rates have gone up because the money is going somewhere else and U.S. Treasury Bonds are not that attractive to purchase and the Federal Reserve has been printing money to make up for all of the money that needs to be raised to pay for everything including low interest rates for housing.

Interest rates have to rise to attract investment money… the problem is that what is guaranteeing the debt is in a major deficit and there are serious questions as to whether it can even be paid back. Think about where the Federal Governement has been spending that borrowed money and seriously question if it will get paid back without printing more money. Once again… would you put $50 Billion into GM or $50 Billion into little known Tesla Motors?

The Effect on Real Estate Values

Las Vegas real estate values were decimated before all of the Government programs. By the time anybody in Washington D.C. thought there was a problem or cared because it was starting to effect them… values had already gone down over 40% in Las Vegas. This was part of the natural effect of the Austrian Business Cycle when home values had skyrocketed due to cheap credit and lax lending standards. Obviously… market surges in home values such as Las Vegas, Arizona, Florida and Southern California were blamed on “speculators” and not the crappy cheap loan programs that were global. When Government money got poured into the market to lower interest rates, loan modification bailouts, etc… values in Las Vegas had already gone down too much to save the market. In actuality, the “bubble markets” were allowed to naturally correct in price from the artificial highs of cheap credit and lax lending standards.

Programs such as the $8,000 tax credit and the low interest rates due to the Federal reserve buying U.S. treasury bonds has created a buying frenzy for real estate in Las Vegas that is so cheap. Other real estate markets in the U.S. continue to decline… even with all of these programs in place.

Will Interest Rates to Continue to Rise?

The trend forecasters that I follow predict that interest rates will eventually rise due to the need for the U.S. Government needing even more money to pay for all of the “stimulus” programs in place. Look for commodity prices to continue to rise as cash rich countries such as China move their money to investing in necessities such as Grain and Oil which will mean higher prices for you.

Real estate markets struggling and showing signs of decline will continue to decline. Throw in the States that are raising their taxes to meet their deficits and expect prices to fall even more as people that can afford to move.. move to states with no state income tax and cheap real estate such as Nevada and Florida.

Las Vegas real estate values will remain stable from here on out in my opinion but that is only because they’ve gone down in value so much from the highs. It’s not hard to find prices even lower then when I first got involved in Las Vegas real estate in 1998.

 

That’s just my opinion

There is huge demand for Las Vegas real estate right now at the current prices. Multiple offers on the nice Las Vegas homes within a day and dwindling inventory all point to stabilization.

The true key though to a “normal” real estate market is when there are not a bunch of programs available such as the $8,000 tax credit, artificially low interest rates, foreclosure moratoriums, etc… to see just how real the recovery is.

Paul Francis, CRS
Prudential Americana Group – Realtors®
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

Summerlin Centre Park

Occasionally… just occasionally, Las Vegas gets to enjoy a rare moment when snow hits the Las Vegas valley. It only lasts for a brief period which is why it’s always welcomed from those of us who at some time of our lives have spent time where a white December is the norm.. and not the exception.

I certainly don’t miss the long winters of Europe, Massachusetts or Chicago… but a little bit of snow is always great for creating some holiday spirit.

So… when Las Vegas does get to experience something out of the ordinary… I break out the camera to show some of the scenes I get to see every day… decorated with a little bit of snow.

Las Vegas Snow comes at the Perfect Time

I don’t think the snow could have come at a better time. Las Vegas has had no shortage of not so positive news in the past month or two as everybody waits around for something positive to break for some motivation.

Willow Creek in Summerlin

Personally… I’ve been extremely busy marketing Las Vegas Homes we need to sell and really have not put too much time into the Christmas shopping. However.. the recent snow makes me want to go out and spend some money in our local economy.

While attending a signing at Noble Title for another Las Vegas foreclosure taken off of the numbers report, I could certainly tell that the great people that work there also had a little bit of excitement in their tone.

While Snow in Las Vegas is not going to change around the economy, it certainly helps in getting everybody’s mind off of the economy… even if it is just for the day.

Paul Francis, CRS
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

Entry to Red Rock Resort in Summerlin

Vistas South Park In Summerlin

Rhodes Ranch Golf Course

Favorite Condominium Projects

WaterView Tower in Chicago

I absolutely love Chicago except for the cold weather and the property taxes (and all of the taxes for that matter). Chicago is well known for communities.. something that could be improved on for Las Vegas when you ask anybody from Chicago. The most popular Master Planned Community in Las Vegas is developed by a REIT out of Chicago… go figure.

I was very dissapointed to see the latest casualty of the lending fallout hit my e-mail box for things taking place in Chicago that involved one of my favorite new condominium towers being built.. the Waterview Tower. Here is the news story that you can read by clicking here.

The Export-Import Bank has put the financing on hold until the U.S. economy improves and it sees “signs that there is a market for the condominiums,” says Zac Henson, CEO of the U.S. subsidiary of Beijing Construction Engineering Group Ltd., which was arranging the loan.

Ouch. If there is no demand seen for these beauties.. what is there a demand for?

I had the opportunity to visit this condominium sales center right when they broke ground and I’m going to tell you that the sales professionals (and office) was nothing less then top notch. The sales professionals there actually know what high rise condominium living is all about. This was not a sales office geared for tourists that might just be popping in off the street with brains easily saturated with get rich quick schemes… but actual people who have a desire to live there.

OK… I don’t want to say I have brains… but I certainly would have wanted to have a place there.

I went and sipped some freshly brewed Coffee with Dottie and spent a good hour or two going over the project. Incredible to say the least and I hope Dottie does well. She is an absolutely fantastic high rise condominium sales agent that Las Vegas high rise condominium sales agents could certainly learn a lot from.

You’ve got to get High rise condominium living to understand it in the first place… And when a project like this is having difficulty in an incredible city like Chicago.. things are not looking too good.

Paul Francis, CRS
Prudential Americana Group
Las Vegas Luxury Real Estate
702.592.3058

Snooze 

Plenty of news coming out concerning loan modifications by banks and this probably has more to do with real estate values tanking (and the attempts to keep them from falling further) then being nice. If you want to keep real estate values up, the best way is to keep people from being foreclosed on in the first place.

So.. modify the loans to make the payments affordable. The problem is… Las Vegas real estate values have already decreased significantly and it does not address the problem of people who paid too much to begin with due to the availability of these loans driving up the demand for real estate – resulting in inflated home prices. (In other words, if these loans were not made in the first place, home values would probably not have gone where they did in the first place.)

Countywide Settles $8.7 Billion Lawsuit - Mandatory Loan Modification Program to assist 400,000 homeowners.

“Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan today announced a ground-breaking $8.7 billion settlement in her predatory lending lawsuit against Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender and servicer. Madigan led the national settlement with California Attorney General Jerry Brown. Nine other states joined the settlement.”

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announces Settlement with Countrywide

Bank of America purchased Countrywide earlier this year and 11 states were involved in the lawsuit. Bank of Amierica has agreed to modify loans for nearly 400,000 customers in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Washington.

The mortgage aid includes revising customers’ payments so they don’t exceed 34 percent of income. Other options include reducing interest rates and adjusting principal so that borrowers don’t wind up actually losing equity under some payment plans.

Hope for Homeowners Launches

Hope for Homeowners Launches - The HOPE for Homeowners program will refinance mortgages for borrowers who are having difficulty making their payments, but can afford a new loan insured by HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For more information on consumer facts and who is eligible, Click Here to Read More.

This is a volountary program for lenders to participate in and includes these key provisions:

• The holders of existing mortgage liens must waive all prepayment penalties and late payment fees.
• The existing first mortgage must accept the proceeds of the H4H loan as full settlement of all outstanding indebtedness.
• Existing subordinate lenders must release their outstanding mortgage liens.

You can Call 1 (800) 225-5342 for more information.

When all else fails and you need to do a Short Sale

If the above solution does not work for you and you have tried working with your lender for a loan modification due to a hardship and need to sell your Las Vegas real estate, you may have to do a short sale. Much like banks and the investment firms of Wall Street wanting somebody to come along (aka Taxpayers) to buy their non-performing assets so they can move on, you need somebody to come along and help you get out of your home. You owe more then it’s worth and you need the banks to agree to what we call a short sale to allow somebody else to buy the home at today’s market value.

So – with all of this money being supplied for all of this Hope, have the banks been helping themselves and Las Vegas Short Sellers who have found themselves in a current hardship and need out? As of right now, no.

For October, only 273 Las Vegas Short Sales closed escrow. There are currently 2,320 Las Vegas short sales in contract and 6,483 Las Vegas Homes (includes condominiums and townhomes) currently available for sale that are classified as a Las Vegas Short Sale.

There seems to be a lot of money being pumped into Hope and hopefully it helps people out for those that it applies to. However, banks need to do a little helping out of their own by streamlining the short sale process and being a little more receptive to people who have had a hardship in their lives and can’t afford any loan modification program.

In other words… let homeowners that have to sell their homes due to a harship or job transfer sell their homes before they go into foreclosure in the first place. There are plenty of people trying to do the right thing in the first place… Banks need to help them out too because it eventually ends up helping themselves.

Paul Francis, CRS
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

Report - 9/9/08

Ok.. we’ve been a little bit busy doing some Las Vegas Short sales.. and buildng a new Las Vegas real estate site that will give potential Las Vegas home buyers a simple to use (and commercial free!) source to search all of the homes available for sale on the Las Vegas MLS.

Hopefully our efforts in helping Las Vegas Home sellers avoid the foreclosure process in the first place by doing a short sale will help slow down the number of Las Vegas bank owned homes available for sale on the Las Vegas MLS.  The number of bank owned homes available for sale in Las Vegas just keeps growing and you would think with the big increase in sales for all of the great deals in recent months, we would see this number start to level off. But.. they are still growing. Currently, there are:

5,368 Las Vegas Bank Owned Properties

available for Sale on the Las Vegas MLS

Since the last Las Vegas Bank Owned Homes report on 8/17/08, we’ve added 282 more bank owned homes available for sale. What’s really interesting is I did a search for Bank owned homes that closed escrow (title actually transferred) during this period and came up with 1,437. Currently, there are 3,751 Bank owned homes in Las Vegas that are Contingent or Pending. (In Escrow.) When you really think about it… there is some fascinating movement taking place right now just in the Bank owned homes category.

Not sure how to apply that information yet or if it really even means anything except as a reference that we can all look back on someday when we get through this mess. (Please note — this real estate blog is just bits and pieces of statistical information I keep track of for my clients so they are not misinformed by salesy types or the media. It’s not really out to sell you anything… You can visit my Las Vegas Real Estate site for that )

Here are some further breakdowns of that 5,368 number:

• 4214 Single Family Homes
• 811 Condominiums
• 337 Townhomes
• 6 Manufactured Homes

Price Ranges of the Bank Owned Homes for Sale:

If you’ve been paying attention.. there are a couple (only a couple) of price ranges where the inventory actually went down from the last report. And.. they are in price ranges that have been very soft in sales in the past year which tells me something. There was also a big jump in the under $100,000 price range… which also gives me some opinions.

What I will certainly tell you is this:

THERE is absolutely NO WAY you can tell me that Las Vegas Real Estate is now unaffordable with traditional financing methods. Something that we certainly could not say in 2005 and 2006.

Paul Francis, CRS
Coldwell Banker Premier
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

“The Chicago-based parent organization for about 1.3 million Realtors nationwide agreed to drop rules that allowed its members to block Web sites from listing certain homes for sale. That rule and another one that didn’t allow Web sites to sell referrals to other brokers were put on hold when the Justice Department filed a complaint against NAR in 2005.”

I’m not too sure how important this really is in today’s world anyways. Since 2005, the internet marketing world (and the real estate market) has changed dramatically and as we’ve found out… it really does matter on the ability of actual real estate agents. Just because you can list a home for sale and put it in the MLS or on a website, certainly does not mean that you know how to market and sell one. Here are some great examples of some really poor real estate marketing.

“The previous rules inhibited competition and discouraged discounting of commissions, the department said. The settlement will mean “better service” and “lower rates” on commissions, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Deborah A. Garza said in a teleconference with reporters. “Consumers will now benefit from unfettered competition.”

I never knew there was never a choice for consumers in the first place. The main proposed rules in question that the DOJ were against, were never implemented. In other words, nothing has changed since 2005 and nothing will change. Consumers have always had a choice just like Real Estate Brokers have always had the choice of what commission they feel they need to charge to stay in business.

With the recent closings of numerous Real Estate Brokerages across the country, online services only in business because they’ve raised and are surviving on Millions of Dollars of Venture Capital, it is quite evident that commissions are where they are for a reason: To Stay in Business. It’s not cheap running a real estate business…. when you look at the super rich in the world, how many of them owned Real Estate Brokerages or were REALTORS? Not many if any that I can think about. If you become a REALTOR just for the money, you won’t be a REALTOR very long as we are finding out during this downturn. Like teaching, you have to have a passion for it.

Two very well known Las Vegas Real Estate Brokerages that filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy last year were some of the most successful Real Estate Brokerages for their franchises in the world. How many of the most successful businesses for franchises such as McDonalds file for Ch. 11?  Certainly does not sound like real estate Brokerages make too much money to me. And trust me, we are not in collusion with other real estate brokerages. Just look around for all of the “We’re #1, We’re the Greatest”, We’re the Biggest, blah, blah, blah”  Advertising for Real Estate Brokerages out there. From years of playing sports and being in a Fraternity, you tend to get a nauseating feeling and a desire to puke when you see this form of self promotion. Not a very good platform for collusion. Even within real estate brokerages, there is competition between real estate agents in the same office. I’ve been with some companies that pushed this with company awards, etc… that pushed production more then satisfaction in determining what a great real estate agent was.

As real estate agents, There is so much competition, we have to spend a ton of money just to be seen in the crowd and even more to market real estate for sale – effectively. Advertising is one thing… marketing is another and that’s where the value of the commission comes in. Just posting homes for sale on the internet or the MLS is advertising… Putting up the right pictures, descriptions and the proper calls to action are another. We get paid because we know how to do it, not just because we are licensed to do it. We waste a ton of money if we don’t do it right, sellers don’t sell their home and we don’t get the money we spent (or time) refunded to us.

Internet Advertising for Real Estateis already very competitive and certainly much more competitive since 2005. Our first real estate website was in 1999 and I think I could count the number of Las Vegas real estate agents that had their own website on my fingers. But… that certainly did not mean that we had a corner on the Las Vegas real estate market and could charge whatever commission we wanted to. And.. just because we put our Las Vegas homes for sale on it, did not mean they automatically sold. It took years to realize this and it’s not taught to real estate agents on company time.

Today, the real estate internet world has become so competitive, web savvy companies with Millions of Dollars in Venture Capital such as Trulia have even realized that they need Real Estate agents to help them out.

Not all real estate licensees or REALTORS are created equal. As evidenced by the recent TRULIA Awareness Campaign, there are still literally Tens (if not hundreds) of Thousands of REALTORS that do not even have a clue about Internet Marketing. Samples of some of the recent articles about the Trulia Trick on REALTORS by REALTORS that do Understand Internet Marketing highlight this:

• Trulia Widgets: Don’t be a Sucka!
• Number1Expert Screws Its Realtor Clients
• Trulia Widgest Stealing Juice from REALTORS
• Internet Real Estate Agents – Help Protect the Consumer

Basically, a very high tech web company with a business model based on advertising (more clicks, higher advertising costs it can charge) has leveraged their expertise in the web world by using the many non-internet savvy real estate agents. (In all fairness, at least these real estate agents have their own real estate websites.)

On another note and something not highlighted yet, I think there may eventually be some backlash from individual real estate agents concerning recent deals being cut with national brokerages with some third party sites. I already know why they did it and what it means but we’ll see how many other real estate agents that it affects pick up on it. (Personally, it means nothing to me so I’m not even going to highlight it. Rule #1: Track your Advertising. I already know it has little benefit in relationship to other things we do so it really does not matter to us… but it will for some real estate agents.)

Realtor.com has been charging Real Estate Agents for years with enhanced features that in my gauges for effectiveness, failed miserably in terms of ROI. We still use the Featured Homes aspect of it just so we can get enhanced pictures and descriptions in it, but just posting a home on Realtor.com does not mean it’s going to sell. Just posting homes for sale on Zillow, Trulia, LasVegashomes.com, ColdwellBanker.com and hundredes of others (we put our Las Vegas homes on all of these and our own sites) does not automatically mean it’s going to sell. It still has to be done the right way.

And…. as more real estate agents really start to learn how to showcase a home on the internet, I have to expect the effectiveness of third party non-real estate broker sites less and less effective in actually selling homes. I make this opinion from years of tracking the numbers from being on these real estate websites and years of being on the internet to begin with.

Rule #1 in Marketing: Track your results from your advertising sources to see what works and what does not.

We track the numbers and share it with the home owners and generally our own sites get much more individual attention and views for our clients listings. (There is a deliberate way we set this up but that’s for me to know from years of testing and tracking our marketing efforts.) All I can suggest for real estate agents is to learn how to accurately track internet advertising and the truth will open up your eyes and make you a more effective real estate agent and an even more valuable source for home sellers.

“But NAR President Richard F. Gaylord said in a statement: “This is clearly a win-win for the real estate industry and the consumers we serve. Today I can say with clear knowledge, underscored by DOJ’s settlement compromise, that the real estate industry is dynamic, entrepreneurial and fiercely competitive.”

The trade association noted that it was not required to admit any wrongdoing or liability, nor was any monetary penalty involved.

Although brokers will not be able to keep homes they are selling from being listed on the Internet, sellers will still be able to block their own homes from being listed on the Web or restrict how they are displayed, according to an NAR spokesman.

The settlement may not lead to greater use of the Internet, or lower commissions, he added.

“They say use of the Internet will bring down commissions, but everybody is using the Internet. Competition is what’s bringing down commissions.”

I’m not a automatic Kool-Aid drinker. I tend to ask what’s in it before I drink it so most of what I’ve said is from actual experience. Rule #1 in marketing: Track your Advertising. I really don’t know how the proposed rules from the National Association of REALTORS would have mattered to individual real estate agents anyways – in fact it probably would have hurt the internet savvy ones more then help just like some recent changes to the REALTOR Code of Ethics that hurts REALTORS that have “MLS” in their domain name. Which ironically, cannot be enforced against non REALTORS and third party sites that just sell the internet consumers information.

On another note, I don’t think millions of dollars of Venture Capital would be invested into internet real estate advertising sites in the current real estate environment. Most of these were created and the capital was raised during the real estate boom when people came addicted to real estate. (Welcome to my world!)

Do you see any new TV shows coming out about real estate? During the boom, so many were coming out that it became hard to track them. And… don’t even get me started about how bad many of them were with just terrible information. (A couple of the first ones such as the one that focused on Trademark Real Estate in South Carolina were good.)

With the multiple sources of internet sites easily available to list homes on today in comparison to 2005, It’s pretty easy to determine that just because you put a home on a site… does not mean it’s going to sell. Otherwise, we’d be selling more homes then ever with all of the internet sites available and that’s just not the case now, is it?

Things have certainly changed since 2005… But.. we knew that back in 1999 when we first got into the internet real estate marketing game. It’s just one form of advertising out of many and just because you have a website and can put homes on it or a blog and can tell everybody how great your dog is, does not mean you are doing anything beneficial for your client.

You still need to know how to Market and they do not teach that in any real estate licensing school that I know about. (Marketing that is covered are topics such as illegal marketing such as Discrimination and Deceptive Real Estate marketing practices.)

Internet Real Estate marketing takes years to understand just how effective it is and what it really means. There are so many new gizmos and gadgets being explored and just like last year’s headliner or the year before that, many of them will just fall on the wayside as being ineffective tools. (Online home valuations come into mind here and some banks may even be in trouble from relying on online based appraisals used during the sub-prime fiasco. Big Hint — don’t rely on them and if you are a real estate agent — you’ll be wasting your money paying for these leads.. we already tried it long ago.)

Michael Evans, international treasurer with the American Society of Appraisers, said some lenders eventually began using computers alone to establish home values.

The same major concepts are still in play as they were back in 1999. While internet websites have become much more effective in helping consumers search around for homes, (and our Las Vegas Real Estatesite with the full search of all Las Vegas area homes listed in the Las Vegas MLS by participating Brokers has certainly helped us out time wise), smart consumers still want experienced and educated Real Estate agents in helping them make a life changing experience.

Just because you can form a real estate advertising site with millions of dollars of Venture capital, does not mean it really helps sell homes. These particular sites even know that they need REALTORS and are in trouble without them.

You don’t learn about what makes a community a community unless you are out and about in it. Community events, charities, social activities, etc… life. Cool graphs, charts, etc.. are nice to look at but personally, I don’t really use them to learn the look and feel of the layout of the land.

The internet is not going to replace our Experience. If it could… it already would have. REALTOR rules or not. Experience is when you’ve already seen it in another form and can save everybody time (and money) and that’s priceless.

It took the Department of Justice and the National Association of REALTORS three years to realize this and come upon an agreement that really means nothing. A lot of time and money could have been saved if they just would have asked the experienced and internet savvy real estate agents in the first place.

Paul Francis, CRS
Coldwell Banker Premier
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

Here is their story released on April 11th that you can read here.

The list was never supposed to be made public. It’s essentially a blacklist of 191 luxury condominiums, many here in town.

That’s a funny quote and to me, is implying that Channel 8 News is breaking the story. Unfortunately, it’s old news and the list has been public since February. My source of information was supplied with a link to the news story where I found it. In other words, I did not make it sound like I was supplying the list of condominiums that were never meant to be “public”.

Just a thought, but when you find information for a story, you should reference the source of your information. I’m not a journalist and even I know that.

Paul Francis, ABR,CRS
Coldwell Banker Premier
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058

(P.S. – Thanks to the guys over at Channel 8 News in Las Vegas for reading my blog.. …)