Realty World Northern California & Nevada

I was at the San Francisco Association of REALTORS® installation dinner last night where Barbara Corcoran was the main speaker. If you haven’t had a chance to see her speak, I highly recommend you do so. I would have loved to work for her and learn everything she knows. It’s not everyday that you meet someone like Barbara, who builds a real estate business from nothing to a company that owns the New York real estate market, and then sells it to NRT for some ungodly amount of money. Since then she has written several books on how she grew her company, which I highly recommend you buy and read from cover to cover at least five times. If you’re having trouble finding inspiration or direction in your company, or life for that matter, this is the book to fix it. 

During her speech last night, she posed a question to the audience that caused complete silence. It was this: “When has there been a time in the real estate industry where money is cheap to borrow and prices of homes are also cheap?” She had a really good point… because history shows that usually those two combinations aren’t in line like they are now. She went on to say that Realtors need to be doing a much better job of articulating this to buyers. Use graphs, charts, retrieve past history of records to show it, but do whatever it takes to get buyers off the fence and realize that now is actually the best time to buy real estate. Think about it… buyers waiting on the fence are making a huge mistake because when these two factors are not in line, they will be priced out of the market. Either prices go up, or interest rates go up. And inevitably, one of these two things will occur. Our entire industry has become mute in the world, dominated by mass media and negativity, and we have got to do everything possible to flood the market with knowledge they need to be hearing. The beautiful part is that you don’t have to sell someone; rather, simply educate them. If you do the math, it all makes sense. So, ask yourself this question… What have I done this week to help buyers realize these two factors are not always going to be the same?

James Dwiggins
Chief Strategy Officer
Jamesd@rwnc.net

It is 2009 and today we are excited to launch our new realtyworldnca.com website and venture aggressively into the online social networking arena. This has been a project in the works for the past several months. Today we are proud to introduce it to the world. The main purpose of this new this website is to combine our franchise sales, agent careers, company blog, and corporate site into one, simple, transparent and easy to use website that everyone would enjoy.

More importantly, we are venturing down a road no franchisor has ever gone by making the landing page of our website the company blog, and allowing everyone the opportunity to participate in discussion. We strongly believe that transparency is an element this industry has lacked for a long time. Our customers are online and they’re not hearing from us enough. In order to regain back that effective communication with them, we all must create a relevant voice.

As many of you know, we have invested over one million dollars over the past year to develop advanced technology in an effort to become the industry leader in real estate social networking. Today you are beginning to see that technology and over the next several months, we will be rolling out many phases of this new technology program to all of our members and our online consumers.

This March when we move to phase II of our technology program, we be providing each of you with your own blog websites, and you will have an extraordinary opportunity to create your voice online, and more importantly, in the communities you serve. We are going to help you reclaim control from negative media and inform your customers about the truth with what’s happening in your markets.

Use our blog as a method to gain comfort writing in the online world. You can start by providing me with your feedback on what you think of our new Corporate website, all of its features, and any suggestions on what we can do make it better. We welcome all feedback and look forward to hearing from each of you.

We hope to inspire all of you to create your own voice over the next several months.

Enjoy!

James Dwiggins
Chief Strategy Officer
Jamesd@rwnc.net

Yep… it was eventually going to happen at some point in time, especially since more Americans now connect to the Internet for their daily news, and because YouTube is the world’s most popular video service to promote oneself. Congress is now getting in on the action by launching official YouTube channels where House and Senate members can control videos of speeches, hearings and events such as ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

Lawmakers saw this to be a value because of the magnitude of reaching a vast number of people via the web during the 2008 Presidential elections. That success is motivating them in giving the public a direct line to what’s happening in Congress.

Check out the House Hub and Senate Hub sites and let me know what you think.