There’s a great new comparable homes feature where a visitor can put their address (or any address for that matter) and get comparable home sales. It’s a neat feature and a good start, but some of the results are a bit out of date. The ultimate idea is probably to move the visitor toward contacting a Realtor, a RE/MAX Realtor I’m sure.

Another great feature is the home search tool. When you enter a city or zip and your additional search criteria the results not only come in a list view with a small photo and initial details but also a map with all of the homes pinpointed by way of a miniature “monopoly house like” icon over which you can hover to see a small detail of what it has to offer, all on the same page!  You can also expand the map to a full page size view and search by map only if you like. Within the same page is also a box which features the trends for that area as compared to the whole state.  It trends back 3 years and has proved to be a really useful tool.

The “luxury home” search returns, it seems, only RE/MAX Collection listings. I wasn’t as big a fan of that feature as the rest but what a great marketing idea RE/MAX.  A more efficient way to search would be to just use the main search for homes feature which you can try out here at www.remax.com.

It features an area where you can get detailed mortgage rates, helpful videos and consumer articles to aid in preventing foreclosure and increasing credit worthiness.

Overall, the new site really is pretty nifty and looks slick.  It seems to be a great tool for home buyers and sellers for research as a starting point without having to dig too deep.

Of course, this may impact the ability of developers and others to get new financing for commercial projects, further depressing the market. The latest numbers from S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show a price decrease of 19.1 for single family homes in the first quarter.

However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Many economists believe that home prices are near the bottom. You can read the rest of the article here.

Reports are that Canadian investment in U.S. real estate has more than doubled in one year, from 11 percent to 23.5 percent, making Canada the largest foreign real estate investor in the U.S.

U.S. property values are in many areas at an all time low thus causing much upside potential. And, the Canadian dollar has move to par with the U.S. dollar.  This hasn’t happened since November of 1976. As such, the Canadians are enjoying a rate they haven’t seen in nearly three decades.

64.4 percent of Canadian buyers plan to use their U.S. homes for vacation purposes according to NAR, the National Association of Realtors. The average use of their property is nearly 3 months with a third of the foreign purchasers intending to use their U.S. home 3-6 months.

Clearly now is the time to buy real estate in the U.S. for many types of buyers, both local and abroad.

In comparison, the economic downturn in the United States, whose financial crisis led to a global recession, is turning into a more measured decline. The pace of job losses has eased and financial markets are showing signs of reviving.

The 27-nation European Union accounts for almost a quarter of the world’s economic activity. Its slow emergence from the financial crisis may slow recovery around the globe.

You can track economic conditions in the European Union and for individual EU members using this interactive map from the Dutch news site NRC. The map shows figures for all the member states by year and quarter. It also lets you compare them by budget deficit, unemployment rate, national debt and economic contraction.

The shorter term economic outlook suggests that the world’s housing markets are likely to continue to suffer for the remainder of 2009. On a quarterly basis, the most dramatic fall in prices occurred in Dubai with -40 percent and Singapore with -16.2 percent. The best performing markets were Jersey with a 5.6 percent increase in values and Finland with a 4 percent increase.

“The world’s housing markets remain under intense pressure with little real evidence of any of the hoped for ‘green shoots’ and even the improvement in performance shown in some countries in the last quarter may yet turn out to be a false dawn according to some commentators,” says Nick Barnes, Knight Frank’s head of residential research.

Atlas Hospitality released a report on California hotel sales earlier this year showing sales in California fell dramatically both in number of transactions and dollar volume in 2008. The trend will also continue this year and is indicative of the commercial market across the US.

However, it is not all bad news. UK based Intercontinental Hotels Group is planning on taking over stalled residential projects. IHG operates over 4,200 hotels in just under 100 countries and owns seven hotel brands.

Companies looking to expand in Mexico outnumber those planning to cut back by 5 to 1, compared to outsourcing competitor China’s ratio of 2 to 1.  Mexico has enhanced its position as a global manufacturing and design base for products from appliances to aircraft parts. For example, Business Week reported in April that the country’s exports of aerospace products have nearly tripled to $3 billion since 2003.

Local governments collaborate with universities and private industry to upgrade their workforces, parts supply networks, research and development programs and infrastructure. And the value of the peso against the dollar has dropped 41 percent since August, making Mexico an even cheaper place to manufacture goods.

LEED certification, which is offered by the U.S. Green Building Council, rates how a building was built. The United States also has Energy Star, a technical assistance program that provides tools and resources to help evaluate energy performance and reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The lack of an international standard may soon change. BREEAM, LEED and Green Star have agreed to develop common metrics for measuring CO2 emissions. This initial step will help international property developers and building owners monitor the energy performance of their global asset portfolio.

According to the survey, in the past six months the confidence level of overseas investors has gone up. Over two-thirds of survey respondents among the 200 members stated they planed to invest some debt or equity in the US real estate market before the end of the year. Foreign real estate lenders say they also plan to increase lending by 58 percent and equity investors plan to increase investment activity by 73 percent in the US.

Current market activity may be partially responsible for the survey results. The highly publicized purchase of AIG headquarters earlier this month by Korea based Kumho Investment Bank may have helped.

As part of the survey, investors also ranked which US cities they felt would recover first. Washington, DC took the top spot, followed by New York City (which ranked first last year), San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles. You can read the full survey on AFIRE’s website here.

]]> http://www.realestateindustrywatch.com/overseas-investment-in-the-us-may-be-on-the-rise/feed/ http://www.realestateindustrywatch.com/keller-williams-agents-make-a-move-to-remax/ http://www.realestateindustrywatch.com/keller-williams-agents-make-a-move-to-remax/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:07:59 +0000 Holly http://www.realestateindustrywatch.com/?p=294 It’s no secrect that the strongest marketing plan for recruiting agents to Keller Williams is, well, recruiting.  KW pays agents, by way of profit sharing, for bringing on new agents.  In theory it sounds great, and for some it is extremely profitable, but for one Keller Williams recruiter and coach it wasn’t enough.  Genny Williams left Keller Williams in search of an office that “valued professionalism and talent as much as she did.”

Apparently she found what she was looking for in RE/MAX Adantage South because  nearly 30 agents from her former KW office quickly followed her.  The technology tools, support and vast resources offered by the office AND  RE/MAX, coupled with the reputation and credibility of Robert and Vicki Scott (Broker/Owners of RE/MAX Advantage South) made it a no-brainer for Williams and her fellow agents to join them.  She brought with her 200 listings and the top 20% of her old firm’s agents.

One of those agents, Scott Howell left RE/MAX previously to join Keller Williams and then came back to RE/MAX. “The profit-sharing tree at Keller Williams was an attractive concept, but when all the office’s top producers went to RE/MAX, all the profit went with them,” Howell says. “There’s been a slow down in business here due to the housing market and the economy. But since coming back to RE/MAX, I’ve seen a boost in business; I just wrote three contracts. Things are definitely selling better.”

Scott and his staff at RE/MAX Advantage South have worked tirelessly to interview and train all of the newcomers and couldn’t be happier with the flood of new agents.  He noted “In our first LeadStreet training class, one of new agents said, ‘I feel like I’ve come from a Tupperware party to a real business,’” says Scott, who employs an in-house Web/IT trainer. “These agents needed a stronger Web and marketing presence; they didn’t have that at their old office to grow their businesses, and now they do. Genny brought amazing mentoring, coaching and accountability skills, merging the best of both worlds.”

According to Williams, “the grass IS greener on the side.” “Real estate companies talk about having integrity all the time,” she says. “But with RE/MAX, the integrity is there and no one has to talk about it or prove it. We’re all very happy with this move and everyone’s getting down to business.”

This appears to be an example of a KW office apparently gone bad.  I personally have known of at least one top producing agent/team leader with Keller Williams who left the profit sharing opportunity to go back to his former Coldwell Banker office here in Nashville because the grass wasn’t greener. But I also know and work with several wonderful agents who are with and love KW.  To me it’s all about the broker you work with, the level of support you get, and the technology offered among others and what it costs you to have those tools.  Just last night I had a meeting about short sales with some fellow agents in Brentwood and one of the agents was a Keller Williams agent who was with an unknown broker when she first obtained her license and was having a hard time with not being recognized so she decided to move to a nationally known brand.  I asked her why she chose Keller Williams and she paused for a second think to about it and responded… “because the agent tirelessy recruited me.”