Food for thought in our industry came in the form of mortgage-to-income ratios at the lowest in more than 30 years, making home affordability better now than it was in the 70’s.  And yet, the US home ownership rate fell to 67.1 percent in the first quarter, the lowest in more than 10 years.

Fannie Mae Chief Executive Michael J. Williams describes a “new realism” in housing in which much stricter lending standards will mean a smaller share of people are able to become homeowners.  I do hope the economy improves, credit scores improve and home ownership extends to a greater percentage of people.

It may be hard for sellers to swallow, but real estate agents sometimes have to suggest a listing price that is disappointing.  When faced with such a difficult conversation, point out that 30% of the houses for sale nationally reduced their price.  And economists predict home value will continue to decrease for the rest of the year. Providing experienced, non-biased perspective is one way we can add great value.

In the coming weeks, it will be interesting to watch Fannie and its sibling Freddie as the government has big plans to overhaul the agencies into nothing like their current form, according to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.  More to come after a conference on housing reform planned for next month convenes.  What would you like to see in the overhaul?

In heartbreaking news, Tehachapi wildfires ripped through southern California and burned at least 40 homes and threatened over 150 more.  Our thoughts go out to those affected and displaced.

In an interesting twist, the same week Twitter deemed itself to be less personal, it made people searches one of its main search features.

Remember MySpace? In an attempt to reinvigorate its image and membership, the site is unveiling a new look, with a major focus on news streams. It will be interesting to see if it can catch up to rivals, especially as numbers show that, since last year, membership has dropped 5 percentwhile Facebook membership has grown 50 percent. (Facebook is actually expected to announce its 500-millionth user– WOW!). Do you think MySpace really stands a chance?

In our industry, we are constantly on the go, driving to new homes around our area. If you have a tendency to get lost, check out Google’s “Send-To-Car” feature that lets users send destinations from Google Maps directly to their vehicles. The service is compatible with 20 car brands including BMW, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury. Don’t ever be late to an appointment again!

Within three weeks of posting her house on Facebook, a woman in Iowa accepted an offer. This just goes to show the power of the Web as a sales tool.

If you are planning to advertise soon, take a page out of About.com’s new campaign. In research, the site “found that consumers responded well to ads that helped them go from a ‘need’ to ‘accomplish’ state.” Think of how you can communicate problem solving in your ads. If you are developing a marketing campaign, check out Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign, a very innovative use of social media which has gone viral. The face of the campaign, former NFL-player Isaiah Mustafa, responds to consumer’s questions via video in almost real time. Can you integrate real-time responses into your efforts?

In closing, if you are planning any late-summer barbeques, check out Weber’s On the Grill iPad app for recipes, rubs, sauces and grilling tips. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE to Download My Presentation from Inman Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2010

VIEW – Beta Brokerage:  An Index of Brokerage Innovation

Our debut Vook is called: “Rule Breakers: The History of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.”

The Vook, written by me and my team, takes an in-depth look at our journey creating and rebranding Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate during one of the most troubled real estate markets in decades.

You can follow us from our first franchise sale (before we even had a public logo), to now being one of the fastest growing real estate companies in the United States. It’s been an incredible ride—that really just begun—and we want to share it with you.

While learning and testing out this media, I realized that Vook and other ebooks are completely changing the nature of literature.

There has been much criticism coming from book publishers and bookstores who say that electronic books sold by Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad will destroy the publishing industry.

I see things differently. After all, disruptive change to an industry is often the best precipitator of opportunity. As an entrepreneur, I see eBooks as an amazing opportunity to contribute to the literary world: they can be sold at incredible prices versus their paper counterparts, and they give rise to non-authors’ works being published just as easily, with just as much accessibility, as best selling authors’ works.

What do you think will happen to literature of the future? Are you thinking of writing your own Vook? In the meantime, take a dive into the history of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate and download our free vook today!

• On Tuesday, July 13^th from 8:30 to 12:30 p.m., join Wendy Forsythe, VP of Network Services,  along with several of the leading brokerage operators in the industry as they discuss several hot topics during the Broker Summit.
• Be sure to grab a cup of coffee Wednesday, July 14th at 10:00a.m. from the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate coffee cart
• Spend some time with me at Meet the Leaders in the Exhibit Hall, Wednesday, 12:30-1:30p.m.
• I will be speaking at the General Session on July 15 10-10:15a.m., as I continue the conversation around The Next Generation Brokerage and reveal what we like to call “Beta Brokerage”
• Stay for the Inman Innovator Awards ceremony on Thursday July 15 11:05-11:20 a.m., where Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate is up for a technology award, as well as Inman Innovator of the Year
• Stop by our Booth, (#106/107) to learn about our partnership with Pantone,  and how we are bringing Real Estate from black and white to Technicolor
  • Grab a Bettertini during cocktail hour, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s “signature drink”
• Get interviewed by the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate NEWS team at the booth or around the conference
• Premium members can stop by the Premium Lounge, sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, for Relax with a chair massage, enjoy breakfast and coffee, play with the new iPad, check your email, and even meet Ryan Scott, of “Top Chef” Fame
  • While you’re there, get the new Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Vook uploaded onto your iPad or iPhone, and get  a first-hand look behind the scenes of building this national real estate company from its initial launch in the late 1970’s, to its rebirth in 2008 as a subsidiary of Realogy Corporation.

We hope to see you there!

Fast forward to the week before Inman in 2009. The team was busy putting the finishing touches on a project we coined “Next Generation Real Estate Brokerage,” which Sherry Chris unveiled as the next generation project on the main stage of the conference.. Over the last year, there have been dozens and dozens of blogs, hundreds of Tweets and a countless number of conversations in the industry about what the future of the real estate brokerage model should and shouldn’t be. This is exactly what we had hoped for.

There are several highlights from 2009. One of which was attending with several of our franchisees. In twelve months we had grown from zero to over 2000 agents. We were on our way to fulfilling the vision of the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brand.

And here we are the week before Inman 2010. We have lots of great stuff planned this year. We continue to stay committed to sharing and learning with our colleagues in the industry.

We start the week off at the first ever Agent Reboot on Monday. Sherry will be discussing life style branding strategies for agents.

I’m honored to be facilitating the Brokers Summit on Tuesday morning. We have gathered some of the brightest and most innovative operators in the business together for a morning that promises to be full of ideas and insights.

Sherry will hit the main stage on Wednesday as part of a Leaders panel and again on Thursday to unveil the next chapter in Next Generation Brokerage. We’ve been working hard on bringing some new and interesting perspectives on the future of the industry.

In between all that, we’ll be hanging out at our booth in the trade show, in the Premium Lounge and if you can’t find us at either of those locations search for the nearest Starbucks! We’ll need the caffeine.

We hope to see you there. But if you can’t be there in person, please follow along with us here, on Twitter.com/BHGRealEstate and on Facebook.com/BHGRealEstate.

Instead think of a triangle. What makes this shape special is that it’s three sides are all the same distance. I view the relationship between broker, agent and consumer like a triangle. In other words, equal.

The consumer is on the top and both brokers and agents should be focusing on meeting the consumer’s needs in the best way possible. At the base of the triangle is the broker at one side and the agent on the other. Both need to bring equal value to each other and both deserve to be rewarded for that value.

We saw this relationship get out of balance starting back in the late 90′s. With agent centric business models being adopted by brokerages, the agents kept more and more of the commission dollars. Brokers began offering fewer and fewer services and tools. However, agents expected certain things from their brokers and were often disappointed. The broker and the agent were in a bad marriage with each other. They shared the same house but had stopped communicating and started sleeping in separate bedrooms.

Then the market downturn hit. That combined with the emergence of technology and the changing needs of today’s consumer left the agent and the broker looking at each other agreeing that it was time to work things out.

And that leads us to today. The successful brokers and agents I see across the country have recommitted to each other. They have found a place where they are each offering a mutually beneficial value proposition and collectively as a team they are focusing on delivering exceptional real estate experiences to the consumer.

Brokers and agents are like parents who should be working together to provide the best possible environments for their kids (i.e. the consumer). Isn’t it time we worked as a team?

My thought:  It doesn’t matter – Keep Selling.

It is important that we know what is happening in our industry and to remain aware of what others are saying to our potential customers – so continuing to read and educate oneself is always good.  But, don’t allow external forces determine your success.  I’ve know many sales professionals who have done well in down times and I’ve known many more sales people who have done poorly in good times.  The difference is always in the person and their attitude.

Long ago, I had a sales and training manager who broke my sales development into three areas: knowledge, techniques and attitude.  Knowledge included market conditions, competitors value props, trends, and products.  Techniques included communication skills, presentation skills, negotiation skills, and conflict resolution skills.  Both knowledge and techniques were tangible and easy to translate/teach/track. But attitude? How do you know if you have a good attitude or a bad attitude and who is to judge?

What I have witnessed in myself and others is that attitude, in sales, is simply the reflection of your work habits and work ethic.  Strong work habits and a productive work ethic is the reflection of a good attitude.  Poor habits and a lazy work ethic reflect a bad attitude.

My old manager use to say “your attitude will determine your altitude.”  Don’t worry about what the others say and just keep working hard – the results will show for themselves.

That advice seems as good to me today as it did then.

Now on to one of my favorite gadgets of all time: the iPhone. According to a recent survey, nearly 17 percent of Verizon’s customers will upgrade to an iPhone. In more iPhone news, check out FireFox’s new app, Firefox Home, which provides users with access to their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks and recently opened tabs. Yet another way to truly bring your office on the road!

The real estate industry can learn a lot from the hospitality industry as it embraces social media to enhance customer service to communicate with Mom, one of this industry’s (and ours!) most important audiences. In one example, Pennsylvania’s tourism website, VisitPA, has partnered with Foursquare to inspire people to take road trips around the Keystone State. Great way to use social media to reach a target audience! Keep watching the location-based space to see how it grows and changes.

In an interesting effort to provide consumers with what they crave in a direct manner, AT&T is blanketing New York City’s Times Square with free Wi-Fi. Take a page from this marketing and branding strategy and think about what service your consumers need. What solution can you provide?

Reports out this week show the real estate industry may be one of the last to rebound from the recession. We sure hope they are wrong! What are some ways we can shift the increased consumer confidence of a general recessionary rebound to the real estate market? How can we get consumers to see the light at the end of the real estate tunnel, much like they are seeing in the Greater Boston area?

CoreLogic this week reported that 24 percent of home mortgages are considered “underwater,” with Las Vegas leading the pack. States that are most impacted by this are being charged to find innovative solutions with $2.1 billion in federal funding. I can not wait to see how these efforts pan out!

New numbers from Zillow show home prices around the country fell 3.8 percent year-over-year But, of course, there are exceptions and reports from NAR and Integrated Asset Services show prices are stabilizing in many markets, including California. Further, according to CoreLogic’s Home Price Index, when distressed sales are excluded from calculations, there is a 4.9 percent rise in U.S. prices from this February through next February. Phew!

On a personal note – my iPad arrived this week! Other than my shoes, it’s already my favorite accessory. Anyone else enjoying the iPad or another new device?