All of these efforts are to help the 2.4 million borrowers expected to lose their homes this year, with the biggest blows in states like California, Florida and Nevada, where home prices have dropped the most. The looming exit of the government in the real estate market has experts wondering how severe the effect will be, especially for these borrowers. What do you expect?

One in five people believe their home’s value increased during 2009, according to a Zillow survey. In reality, 28 percent of home’s values increased last year. Turns out, it’s a little better out there than we think!

NAR this week recognized the autonomy of today’s homeowner with the launch of HouseLogic, a Web site designed to help homeowners plan and organize their home projects as well as offer  home improvement advice and how-to’s, among other things. For those who want a hands-on experience, however, a duo in California opened a DIY Academy, where homeowners can learn everything from hanging drywall and installing crown molding to painting and wiring. As homeowners increasingly consider renovating their homes, we may see these types of schools pop up across the country. Anything like this in your area?

As these DIYers understand, for all the talk about digital and online interaction, it is still nice to have the one-on-one experience. While it may seem as ancient as a hand-written letter in the email age, there are plenty of valid arguments on the value of open-houses, including further engaging consumers and agents alike. What do you think is the biggest benefit for hosting open houses?

In advertising news… We have come a long way since Hot Wired ran the first banner ad in 1994. Now we can get as targeted and localized as you want, thanks to advertising exchanges like Google’s DoubleClick and others. Banner ads are still a great tool for the real estate industry. We should keep a close eye on this medium as Jon Brod, the executive vice president of AOL Ventures, believes “online local is the largest commercial opportunity yet to be won.” I bet leaders will start to emerge this year.

Following on the heels of Google’s Buzz announcement, Microsoft announced integration plans this week with Facebook and MySpace for its Outlook Social Connector. Thoughts? Do you plan to use either?

Speaking of, I know a lot of you are concerned with the ROI on social media efforts. Let’s be honest, being active in social media takes hard work and it is sometimes difficult to see the payoff. Fortune 500 companies are also wrestling with this same issue. Yet, we have to remember that the most important thing about communicating with consumers is talking to them where they already are. And I bet a lot of your audience is online. The effort is worth it!

This week I have been busy cheering on both of my “home countries,” Canada and the United States, as the world’s best athletes battle on the slopes of Vancouver at the XXI Olympic Winter Games. Besides the competition, there is a lot to be said about the advertising opportunities available on this world stage. Many brands, including Procter & Gamble, tied the launch of campaigns to the lighting of the torch, leading to one of the most concentrated periods of big-name marketing efforts in years. Although your companies’ soapboxes will likely never allow you to be as “loud” as these mega-brands, we can take an important lesson from these brands: talk to your consumers when they will be listening. If the Olympic Games are inspiring more than just your branding and you’re looking to hit the slopes and challenge the likes of gold medalist Lindsay Vonn, there are new interesting (and cool) GPS ski gloves that could navigate you safely. I might have to get myself a pair!

The audience wasn’t exactly jumping up and down after this presentation. From a recovery stand point, about as positive as the group could muster was an L shaped recovery with no upswing for the next few years. Alex Perriello shared forecasted 2010 NAR numbers that predict sides will be up 5.4% over 2009 and average price up 3.2%. Short sales and foreclosures will continue to keep their strangle hold on the market.

There was a noticeable change is the reaction of not only the industry leaders but the general audience to the discussion about the future market conditions. There seems to be an acceptance that the market of 2005-2007 is gone. The industry is not going to somehow magically travel back in time and get those days back. Instead, we have to turn a corner and let go of the expectations we once had. Reset those expectations, focus on servicing today’s buyers and sellers, and move forward.

On a moving forward note, the audience was encouraged to lobby the government to consider extending the first time home buyers tax credit program. There is a general feeling that the government is so consumed with health care right now that they’ve forgotten the looming expiration of this program. Trulia has even started a petition and is gathering signatures in support of the extension.

Other hot topics included:

• social media
• talent attraction (or recruiting for those of you who haven’t been drinking the BHGRE kool aid!)
• cost cutting (Gino Blefari recited a long list of cost cuts Intero has made over the last year)
• distressed properties and
• measuring ROI on marketing.

The folks at RISMedia work really hard at putting this event together and as usual did a great job! Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and said hello. It was great to see you. In good times and not so good times, this is still the best industry with the best people you’ll find anywhere!

The migration from the big screen (computers) to the little (screen smart phones) appears to be where greater innovation is taking place despite the limitations in screen size. Brian Boero from 1000wattblog raises awareness to its impact on real estate and offers reasons why a small screen real estate experience might be better than a large screen experience for the consumer in this post titled Real Estate technology is headed straight for the small screen.

Want proof that social media has a clear and distinctive ROI? How about the $3,000,000+ in sales Dell can account for directly from Twitter. RWW details it in their post titled: Social Media ROI: Dell’s $3m on Twitter and Four Better Examples

Fast Company published this post about the 10 Most Creative People in the Web Business. Some I’m sure you’ve heard of and some you most likely have not. It’s worth clicking through their names and getting familiar with them and their stories as these folks are creating things we not only can’t seem to live without but as truly shaping the future of the Web.

In their new bestselling book, Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success (HarperCollins), ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman and BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay write that women are “hot commodities” with tremendous, untapped power in the marketplace. In the Age of Obama, mainstream businesswomen are lifting “the veil of secrecy,” to be more transparency about workplace issues such as the balance between careers and motherhood. Published here

What do you do?

That’s the question I ask myself everyday.  Fortunately, all of the marketing I am responsible for here is online and therefore trackable down to the impression/click or action.  This is all made possible by the ad serving technologies we use (i.e. Doubleclick) and web analytic providers i.e., (WebTrends, Google Analytics, Omniture, Coremetrics, etc.).

Part of the challenge with access to all of the data is making sense of it and using it to further your objective, which for discussion is about increasing lead capture to gain market share.

Over time, I have developed a very simple exercise for making your online marketing investment work twice as hard for you without spending a single extra dollar on marketing.  I refer to it by the term conversion rate optimization analysis.  In laymen terms it means getting more people from point A to point Z by removing potential obstacles along the way.  The only caveat is that it does require an analytics platform and minimal tagging on key confirmation pages.  Google Analytics makes this simple to implement requiring no more than 3 or 4 hours at most even for a beginner.

Start by asking yourself what is the prime objective of driving traffic to your site.   Ask yourself what marketing methods will you employ, e.g. banner’s, paid search engine campaigns, distributed listings, etc.  I am willing to bet your prime objective is turning traffic into inquiries based around a listing or helping a prospective buyer search for their new home.  If that is the case, then identify the path you think the user should be following to get from point A to point Z.

I’d imagine the first action is running a search (whether it be for listings or agents), that is the top of the funnel.  Have you checked to see how easy is it for the  user to find that function on your home page?  Is it above the fold (meaning is it visible without scrolling)? It is important to focus on getting as many people into the funnel as possible because you are going to lose them on the journey to becoming a lead.

The next step is typically a search results page and the desired action is selecting a listing(s) or agent to view in more detail.

Lastly, is the detail page, which has the call to action for converting a browser into an official lead.

Let’s look at this process via a funnel analysis with numbers as it effectively communicates the point.  100,000 visitors come to my home page a month, 30% of those visitors run a search, 40% of the searchers view a detail page and 20% fill in a lead form or call for more information.  That means I have 2,400 leads and 2.4% conversion which isn’t half bad.

Now let’s assume that through my funnel analysis I make minor tweaks to streamline the path from home page to lead capture and I was able to increase the visitors running a search by 5% to 35% by making the search box more prominent. Then let’s say I tweak my search results page to allow 50 results per page instead of 20 that increase the likelihood to click on something by 10%.  Lastly, let’s say I add 3 bullet points explaining why a user should reach out and contact me next to the call to action button to initiate a lead form that raises our completion by 15%.

Do you realize that by making those simple changes you receive over 3,700 new leads!

The point is this: To increase lead capture, there are numerous things you could be doing to your site to accomplish this that won’t cost you a dime. Focus on improving your web site sales funnel and I promise it will have a dramatic impact on your marketing ROI.

Here’s the problem.   I have yet to hear a story about how someone found their home using an iPhone.  This is what happens when you get so wrapped up in how cool an app or a feature is you forget to consider what real value it has for the end user.  I hate using a “case study of one” as a legitimate rationale for why not to do something, but it’s my blog post and I am going to do it anyway.  From my previous posts you may know that I sold my house almost 3 months ago.  Unless I wanted my family (2 kids) to live with my Mom and Dad for the foreseeable future we had to find a new home, FAST!

After narrowing down the location(s) and finding the right agent, she set us up with MLS email alerts for new properties in our desired towns as that is the only way to ensure we saw every conceivable listing (yes I know we didn’t get FSBOs and pre and foreclosed properties).  If she saw a home hit the market or I saw an email alert that looked promising I would have our agent set a showing.  We repeated that process until we found the right house.  That’s it.  The process is fairly simplistic and effective if done right.

Not once during the home search process did I get the urge to pull out my phone and start looking for properties in a 10 miles radius from where I was currently standing.  Or was I ever tempted to search for open houses on the way back from my weekly Sunday trip to Costco.  Maybe I am not their target, but I severely doubt it as I have 2 mobile phones (iPhone and Blackberry), spend all of my time on the internet web and lastly, but most importantly, I was looking to buy a house!

Do not take this post as I am against all RE mobile apps, it’s just that they need to enhance a natural experience instead of trying to create a new process for something that really isn’t flawed.  Alternatively, I am a proponent for making your web site display and navigate properly on a mobile device because I don’t want to ignore the small, but growing, percentage of people who view web sites on the go.  Coldwell Banker did a good job in late September with an iPhone version of their site.

Bottom line is that mobile applications really have to add some legitimate value to the home buying process to be worthy of creating them in the first place.  As one of the newest real estate brands that has become sort of mantra for almost everything we do.

I don’t want this post to come off too negative so I am listing a few of my favorite mobile apps that aren’t just a great user experience but actually fill a void when I am not near my PC.

Jott(or Remember the Milk), Yelp & Urbanspoon.

Try’em.   I’d love to know what you think.