This is one of the most on-the-mark posts I have read in a while!

I am sorry I haven't posted in a while...but to reward you for waiting I give you a great post from Inman that you all should read and understand, and read again...

http://www.inman.com/buyers-sellers/columnists/berniceross/reconstructing-listing-presentation

After you read this think about how you present to sellers - and promise you'll never do it that way again.

So we're in a recession....

OK, so the news is official now - the economy is in recession. The word came from the National Bureau of Economic Research yesterday, as if we needed a special governing body to tell us that.

Do you feel any different? When you woke up this morning did your lumbago hurt more than usual? Probably not. Things are just the same today as they were the day before. In fact, the economy has supposedly been in recession for a year now and we (supposedly) didn't even know.

Illegitimi non carborundum.... (google it if you don't know what it means).

Live your life as if you never heard the news yesterday - for it really doesn't matter. Keep managing your relationships, keep serving as a resource for your clients, keep promoting why our firm is best suited to serve homeowners in times like these. The statistics exist (check Your Hearthside Space if you haven't seen them) so use them to your advantage and be your own economic expert.

Illegitimi non carborundum....

So if Baby Boomers work longer, what will it mean for real estate?

Check out this article from Time Magazine about how the economic slowdown is forcing baby boomers to work longer.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1860323,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

So what does that mean for us in real estate? Probably a few things...

1) It means that those people who thought they were going to end their careers, sell their homes and move to Florida will be enjoying our local lifestyle a bit longer. That may actually be good right now, because we need inventory to decrease, not increase, if prices and DOM are going to return to "normal" levels.

2) It also means that our client base is going to be comprised even more of people outside the baby boom demographic. So if you have been avoiding those classes on communicating and selling to Gen X and Gen Y, you had better get there if you expect to survive.

3) For managers, it may mean your office is filled with baby boomer agents longer than you thought. If Sally Agent was planning to leave the business when Harry Hubby (or vice-versa of course) got the big pension, now they may be hanging on a bit longer. That means you have to plan for them in your office space plan and also make sure they are living up to their obligations in #2 as well.

4) Finally, it means as a company we are going to be even less wedded to our newspaper advertising. We all know it is ineffective (or if you don't please comment here and I'll cite all the statistics) but we have been doing it during the transition from the baby boom to Gen X in order to cover all our bases - now it doesn't make sense to keep covering.

We already knew it was going to be an interesting year...this may just be the icing on the cake.

FSBO site channels listings to Realtor.com? From Inman News

Agents - this is something pretty important and you may want to understand how it works (or doesn't work).

Even though changes in market condition have made FSBO a less-desirable option many sellers are going to see it as a way to save money; especially if it comes with additional internet benefits the seller thinks they can not get now.

http://www.inman.com/news/2008/11/14/fsbo-site-channels-listings-realtorcom

A great article as you do your business planning

While you are in the middle of your business planning take time to consider whether you are just going through the motions or really embracing change:

http://www.1000wattblog.com/2008/11/stilleto-in-a-crate-of-blunt-axes.html

Some great ideas from the folks at 1000Watt

Here is a great post from the 1000Watt Consulting blog (which for the record is one of the links available to you everyday on the Your Hearthside Space Intranet)

http://www.1000wattblog.com/2008/11/tuesday-tips.html

So I'm LinkedIn....Now What?

Judging by the number of requests I have received in the last few days, people are starting to learn about the social networking site LinkedIn and are starting to sign up for their (free) account. If you haven't done so already, perhaps it is something you should investigate - according to their internal reports they have 30 Million users out there now.

If you are not familiar with LinkedIn, basically it is a network of users who "connect" to one another to help build referral bases, find professionals, and join groups of people associated with specific activities or causes. It is often called "facebook for the working class" becasue it associates you mainly by your profession, not by your high school, your hobbies or your college fraternity (although all of these can be referenced in there too). LinkedIn was started by some of the best minds in the Web 2.0 space, and their business model is one that will most likely last for a long time to come.

The truth of the matter is that LinkedIn is supposed to bring online the basics of that game we used to play called "six degrees of seperation" (or it's related game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon"). By knowing 10 people who know 10 people you are immediately connected to 100 people, who are connected to 10 people, and ten more....you get the idea. I just checked and my network on LinkedIn can connect me to close to a million people!

What is important to me at this point, however, is what all of you who are "Linking-In" (the verb for using the service) are going to do once your account is live. From what I can tell, so far the only thing you are doing is linking to one another in the office (I always know who joined, because I am one of your first connections).

Sorry to tell you, but that is not going to be overly productive - most of those folks already know a good Realtor or two. If the purpose of LinkedIn is to help professionals find other professionals, linking with the rest of the Realtor community just muddies the waters and makes the service less useful. That doesn't mean you can't connect with a Realtor, just that you should not make them the majority of your contacts.

I just checked, and of the 20 or so CBH people in my contacts, the one with the largest number of contacts has 54. In LinkedIn, that is a pretty trivial number - made even worse when you consider that 20 of them are probably other Realtors.

Before I tell you how to get more contacts, a reminder that LinkedIn (like all social networking sites) has space for you to write about yourself....sort of like a profile page. This is where you can highlight your achivements and expand on your skills, so that someone who comes across your name in the middle of the night can learn about you before they make that connection. Please be sure you take full advantage of this tool and put in everything you can.

Now you have to get connected. Here is the easiest way I know - search for the clients you worked with this year. Take 20 minutes and search out (using the LinkedIn Connection finder) all the people you had positive real estate dealings with (even if they didn't close the deal, they still want to recommend you, right?). Once you find them, CONNECT with them. But don't just spam them with a request to be contacts....actually use the tool for what it is worth and talk to them about providing referrals! Once they are connected to you, ask them for a recommendation (one of the key tools in LinkedIn is the chance to get recommendations from others).

There are 1,000 things you can do with LinkedIn - this is a good start. Look for more from Stef and me over the next few months.