Rethink, Regroup, and Reinvigorate

“Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You've got to pay for it.”
--Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind

It’s been a tumultuous few years to say the least.

With the economy still stuck in the mud, despite the turning of our wheels, a recovery appears to be a long, long way off and the good old days of 2006 are nothing more than a distant dream.

It seems like Pandora’s Box has been opened as the housing market continues to whimper on.

Later today, NAR will release what is predicted to be a decline in July home sales, and foreclosures continue to rise in certain areas in the country. It seems we're continuously mired in bad real estate news.

But it's not all doom and gloom. This weakened economy may just be the reprieve we need to buckle down, tighten up, and condition ourselves for a post-recession economy. Sure, the sales may be down right now, but never before have agents had so many advanced tools at their disposal. Never before have agents been able to openly and actively communicate with their clients.

We will most likely come out of this Great Recession a bit worn, but also a bit wiser. The proverbial cream will rise to the top and the best agents will shine through. After all, the only way to turn a lump of coal into a diamond is with time and pressure.

The question is, are you bettering yourself in this downtime, or are you still waiting next to the fax machine for the latest offer? Are you talking to your clients on Facebook to see what they feel about the local real estate market? Are you polishing your HTML skills or updating your website?

Because now's the time to regroup, rethink, and reinvigorate your business. This recession, after all, won't last forever.

So, when times are difficult in the midst of all of this bad news, don't forget what was at the bottom of Pandora's Box: hope.

New Study Confirms What We Already Knew

In a new study funded by the Captain Obvious Foundation, home buyers' satisfaction with real estate companies improved while home sellers had a less than favorable view.

The J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Home Buyer/Seller Study™ was released yesterday and it found that for home buyers had a 12 point increase in satisfaction (803 on a 1000 point scale) from 2009 while home sellers had a 40 point decrease (742 on a 1000 point scale).

Of course, this only makes sense. With the housing market still reeling from its burst bubble, and with interest rates still historically low, buyers with the cash and ability to buy have the pick of the litter when it comes to homes, and sellers have to compete with short sales and foreclosed properties when trying to recoup their equity.

The good news, however, is that regardless of which side of the contract a client's interests are, the need and importance for a good agent has substantially increased. It's almost as if the housing crisis has really shed light on the best agents out there, with the cream rising to the top.

Indeed, for the third consecutive year, DotLoop partner Keller Williams was ranked the highest in customer satisfaction for home buyers and Prudential - another DotLoop partner - was ranked the highest for home sellers.

After all, even Captain Obvious knows that great customer service always leads to greater satisfaction, regardless which side of the contract you are on.

Reading, Writing, and Real Estate

My girlfriend is one smart cookie, so it really wasn't much of a surprise when she got accepted into grad school a few weeks ago with a full scholarship. What was surprising, however, was the cost of apartments in a college town, which we found out first-hand when we went apartment-hunting last week. Let me tell you: we are both spoiled here in Cincinnati.

Of course, after watching the video below, featuring Tara-Nicholle Nelson from trulia.com, it seems quite reasonable that apartment prices are so steep.

And it's not just apartment rates that are being kept afloat. Housing prices in college towns are also insulated from the national downturn in real estate. In fact, State College, Pennsylvania, the home town of Penn State, saw 82% fewer foreclosures than the national average.

So, if you're a smart cookie like my girlfriend, you'd be wise to hold on to your home if you're living in a college town. After all, where else can you get kegs and eggs for breakfast every day?

Separation Anxiety

DotLoop is growing and, with growth comes departments and teams. We have the forms team and the sales team and the marketing team. Each has its own function, of course, but we all work together quite seamlessly, kind of like DotLoop itself.

It's working great here at DotLoop, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how erroneously compartmentalized we have made our world. As a news junkie, I stop by all kinds of news sites and see the same separating tabs: politics, business, entertainment, science and technology, health. Of course lately, everyone - even those not within the industry - are clicking on that other tab: real estate.

But after reading about the TARPs and the DOWs and the NASDAQS, I'm starting to see how silly all of these little categories are. After all, it only took one tab - real estate - to affect every other tab in one way or another.

And now that the housing bubble has burst, it seems more and more clear how interconnected everything really is. The effects of one thing collapsing can and do resonate throughout the rest of the economy not only here in America, but all over the world. A defaulted mortgage in Iowa can cause a farmer in Taiwan to lose his job. Not only are you and your neighbor Jim feeling the effects of this crash, but so are Otto in Germany and Kim-Ly in Vietnam.

If we have learned anything from this financial crisis we've all been trudging through, I hope it's this. Everything is connected. Your loss is your neighbor's loss is the world's loss.

While I understand that this need to categorize and separate is a natural thing to do, I feel that we've gone overboard. We're suffering from separation anxiety, that is, our need to separate and categorize is making us crazy.

So I am calling an end to all of this distilling and dividing. Get rid of the marker that draws lines around us. Pop those barrier bubbles faster than that housing bubble. After all, most times, it's not about black and white, wrong and right, or day and night. It's about the dusk that connects all of us.

Can I get a little kumbaya, here?