RISMEDIA, February 10, 2010—The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board have been purchasing mortgage-back securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for a little over a year now. Their efforts, along with the Home Buyer Tax Credit have helped bring down long-term interest rates and provide the housing industry with some much-needed price stabilization. In this month’s Power Broker Roundtable, industry leaders Jeff Detweiler and Glenn Melton discuss the likeliness of the Federal Government backing away and what effect their actions will have on the marketplace.

RISMEDIA, February 9, 2010—It has become an all-too-familiar obstacle to writing about successful agents: “My partner doesn’t want anyone to know who we are. We’re number one in our 50-agent company and everyone copies everything we do. My partner’s afraid that if they know how we get so much business from the Internet, they’ll steal that from us. Feel free to have anyone outside our market area call me for a recommendation, but I’m afraid you can’t use my name—we just can’t risk it.”

RISMEDIA, February 5, 2010—RISMedia has announced the session lineup for its 2010 Real Estate Leadership Conference—“The Real Estate Social Media Summit.” The official conference of the Top 5 in Real Estate Network®, RISMedia’s Leadership Conference will be held June 9-10, 2010, just outside of New York City at the beautiful and conveniently located Hilton Rye Town in Westchester County, New York. This year’s Conference will take the form of a Summit

RISMEDIA, February 4, 2010—(MCT)—Ethelda Lopez, a retired telephone company worker recently watched as her dream retirement home was auctioned off on the lawn outside a county courthouse in downtown Merced, California. "When I heard my address, it was so disheartening," she said. "It's amazing how it all works." For six months, she had made hundreds of calls to her mortgage company, federal officials, local political leaders—begging them all for lower payments or more time. No one paid heed.

RISMEDIA, February 3, 2010—Real estate veterans Greg Rand and Kevin Levent have not only seen it all but survived it all…with flying colors, I might add—expanding, growing and gaining marketshare throughout all kinds of real estate cycles. In 2009, these two brokers made a bold statement at a bold time and switched from their longtime brand affiliations to Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. Why mess with a good thing?

RISMEDIA, February 2, 2010—Recently a Mississippi agent wrote to a client of ours who is on our website’s list of success stories, asking for advice. “I am with Coldwell Banker in Mississippi and looking into the PROLeadS™ system with Compass,” she wrote. “I saw a success story about you on their website and I would greatly appreciate your opinion about the number of leads and the quality of them as well. $4,000 is a lot of money to me in this economy but would be worth it for quality leads that I could convert.”

RISMedia’s 22nd annual Power Broker Survey Now Available for Completion RISMEDIA, February 1, 2010—RISMedia’s 22nd Annual Power Broker Report & Survey—the industry’s leading report ranking the nation’s top brokerages—is now available for completion online. Inclusion in this listing of the real estate industry’s “who’s who” has long served as an important competitive tool and carries even more weight in today’s difficult marketplace where many real estate firms have been forced to close their doors. The deadline for completion of the survey is Monday, February 22nd. To complete the survey, please click here.