"2008 Real Estate predictions"

Predictions and advice to succeed in 2008

2008 will no doubt mean huge shifts in the real estate industry and henceforth the online community. Words that come to mind are some of the obvious ones. The following may be experienced by the public and certainly agents:

Foreclosures
Bankruptcy
Office Closures
Massive Attrition from the industry
And a possible recession beyond real estate
Information Overwhelm and Confusion
Misplaced energy
Demand for publishing
Near Death of the MLS
The Renewed art of Creative Financing

Some of these are self evident while I will explore the others thru this post.

We are getting what could be seen as attacked online. There is so much information being thrown at us that choice is becoming less empowering and more inhibiting. The online world will become even crazier as the advice being thrown about out there is getting more and more complex, and in many cases just plain bad.

Guard Your Information Flow

Sifting thru information is an expense. How you manage that expenditure will determine your profits.

Have you ever got online without a specific goal and found yourself stuck in reading every email that of course leads you onto the web? And the end of the day comes and you basically have surfed some really "interesting" sites all day. Not doing anything to bring you closer to your goals?

If feels justified, but with honest introspection, you know the day was a wash. And 8 hours of non sense at $100 an hour is an $800 loss. But of course if that is habitual then one can probably make more money hourly at the local Super Market. The best way to beat this is to surf the web with specific goals and outcomes.

Expenditures can include:

Email
Bad online marketing strategies
Reading low value information

Remedies:

Unsubscribe from non profitable advice.
Start timing your online activities.
Separate email from must have email, subscriptions, and family, friends, and jokes. Separate them into unique email accounts that don't beg you to look. Gmail or Yahoo is a great solution.
Schedule email and online reading time. Leave when you have to leave. Get an egg timer, and live by it.
Have rules for what you will read and not read.
Read business items on a business computer and fun items on a separate fun or family computer.

I find from my own consulting and of course my own experience that often these bad habits are from a lack of focus and is often an avoidance or procrastination defect. It is a poor plan or lack thereof that causes such.

The guys at NLP-Times have offered a great goal setting format for you to follow. The key to getting more done is focus and that will come from your personal desires and values. If you become unfocused ask if you are serving your mission. Focus on your tasks that you create to manifest your goals. You will always know if you are on target.

Be skeptical of every new big thing that comes down the pike.

Look Where They Ain't

If you ever notice, I rarely quote advice from within the real estate industry. The reason is an industry usually lives and dies by one paradigm. When everyone is running together in the same-wrong direction it can feel right, all the way until you are falling off the cliff into BK.

Right now everyone is doing the net thing. Hey I am all for that. It is the space where my business thrives. However, people may come online, but they buy offline.

Do you pick up your snail mail. Yah, me too. And I can not help but open every single piece.

I don't think the owners in your market are creating three unique addresses like I suggest above, nor do they have the ability to quickly scan your mail or it to dump into a a junk folder. There are no email rules to place them in a mailbox for future viewing either.

Most of the time the mail man delivers it. How many times have you blasted an email out and gotten horrible deliver ability and open rates?

And your competition is not doing it. Running a mail campaign along with email is lethal. Do what everyone else is not. By the way you can run your mail like email. This company will check your mail, scan it and throw away the type of letters you designate.http://www.EarthClassMail.com

On the subject of email and lead capture. Study direct response and stop sending "out of the box" email sequences to your prospect list. Either learn good drip sequence crafting, or hire out. Hint, if you got the letters pre-packaged from your vendor it probably sucks.

Start learning that your online presence means you are a publisher and creator of unique content. This is not a suggestion, it is a warning. The MLS was your only unique differentiation in the marketplace until recently. Now everyone, including non Realtors have access to listings.

The biggest warning that I can give is that the web is quickly becoming a testament to your business relevance or irrelevance in the marketplace.

Other Predictions and tips for 2008

Real Estate Related

Trulia

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