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In traditional housing recoveries, individuals and households provide the bulk of the demand the market needs to rebound. This time, though, a different kind of buyer has been powering the housing recovery: investors looking for valuable rental property. Along with individual investors, institutional investors have poured into the single-family home market, buying enough foreclosed and unsold homes to reduce inventories, drive up prices and encourage new construction. All-cash home purchases – many of which are made by investors – made up about 32.0% of sales nationally in March 2013, a stark rise from about 20.0% in 2009, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

Have you ever had a sale that didn’t close and you weren’t sure why? Chances are you lost the sale because you didn’t establish sufficient trust and rapport with your prospect. Once you have developed trust and rapport, you’ve actually got the hard part behind you and you’re probably going to make a sale!

Data scraping and misuse of listing data that belongs to brokers are growing concerns. Many scrapers (or others who receive the data legitimately but use it in ways that violates its licenses) are actively reselling listing data for various uses not intended by brokers, such as statistical or financial reporting. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Curt Beardsley, vice president of consumer and industry development at Move, Inc., a leader in online real estate and operator of realtor.com®. Beardsley shared his thoughts on the proliferation of data scraping, the grey market for data, and how brokers can protect their data from unintended uses.

As Congress pursues comprehensive tax reform it should focus on doing no harm to housing and America’s 75 million homeowners by maintaining current tax laws for homeownership and real estate investment, the National Association of REALTORS® said in a recent testimony. NAR President Gary Thomas testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee concerning Federal tax provisions that affect residential real estate.

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth of a seven-part series from Homes.com on how to manage your online reputation. Homes.com has put together a free playbook on the topic, which can be downloaded here. Watch for this series in RISMedia’s Friday Weekly Business Builder e-newsletter. On the Internet, word travels at a million miles a minute. When you start delving in to managing your online reputation, you may come across reviews of you

Sales of newly built, single-family homes rose 1.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 417,000 units in March, according to newly released figures from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau. “This is the second-best sales number we’ve seen since early 2010, and a good sign of the continued, gradual headway that our industry is making toward recovery as more buyers jump off the fence in time to take advantage of today’s low interest rates and prices,” said Rick Judson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Charlotte, N.C. “The latest sales report is right in line with our forecast for continued, modest increases in home prices and sales through 2013,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “At this point, we are about half-way back to what would be considered a ‘normal’ level of sales activity

Last month we discussed how changes in the corporate mobility industry may herald new business opportunities for brokerage-based relocation departments. Traditionally, relocation directors focused on buyer and seller referral revenue, but with fewer corporate transfers and increased renter populations, it may be time to include more non-traditional approaches. This month, we focus on key mobility trends and related support services. For future issues we’ll include topics that interest you most, so please take our short survey here. Awareness of trends that can impact mobility

It’s 8:00 a.m. in a Ritz-Carlton meeting room in downtown Chicago as a baker’s dozen of real estate brokers representing $90 billion in annual home sales gather at the thrice-yearly board of directors meeting for the company they own and operate. This is arguably the single most powerful group of leaders in the industry. Yet curiously, the company that they collectively oversee and that has flourished over its 16-year history is often overlooked by real estate pundits and trend-spotters. That company is Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®,

In the season premier of “Mad Men,” Creative Director Peggy Olsen uses a technique learned from Don Draper to help form ad copy for a client. She writes a letter as if she is a consumer recommending the product to a friend. Today, Peggy would be reading online reviews to learn, from the consumer’s standpoint, the clear advantages of her product – and listening to your clients is never a bad thing. What would your clients say if they wrote a letter to a friend recommending you? What’s really important to them? And what would they say that would convince a friend to do business with you?

Freddie Mac recently released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates moving lower this week amid data showing weaker consumer spending. This marks the third consecutive week fixed-rate mortgages have moved lower as the housing market continues to recover. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.41 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending April 18, 2013, down from last week when it averaged 3.43 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.90 percent. Additionally, the 15-year FRM this week averaged 2.64 percent with an average 0.7 point, down from last week

In preparation for Open House weekend, realtor.com® and Top Producer® have jointly collaborated on two elements of a successful open house: Attendance and follow-up. To start things off, realtor.com® will help you learn how to post their open houses on the realtor.com® web site and also to make them visible on realtor.com®‘s mobile applications. As to follow-up, this begins with an array of materials that can be brought to the open house that will catch the attention of potential buyers and sellers, and concludes with new ways of following up, that according to one broker, doubled the effectiveness of his open house by using mobile technology and MarketSnapshot’s BrightOpen™ tool.

Housing construction passed the psychological mark of one million starts in March coming in at 1.036 million homes, up 7 percent from an upwardly revised February level of 968,000. The surge was due to a 31 percent increase in apartment construction to a level of 417,000 units, the highest since January 2006. Single-family construction fell 4.8 percent to 619,000 from an upwardly revised February level, which was the highest since May 2008. The first quarter single-family average was 628,000 up 6 percent from the fourth quarter 2012. Housing permits were down 3.9 percent but from a February high not seen since July 2008. The first quarter average was 915,000 up 2.6 percent from the fourth quarter. Builders were stock piling permits in February

As the market continues to shift, one industry trend seems to be making continuous waves: vacation homes. With low prices and mortgage rates still available in most parts of the country, affluent buyers—or those who have always dreamed of a cabin on a lake—are making their move and purchasing second homes in exotic locations to be used as vacation getaways. According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), sales of investment and vacation homes jumped in 2011, with the combined marketshare rising to the highest level since 2005. NAR’s 2012 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey, covering existing- and new-home transactions in 2011, showed vacation-home sales rose

While the Federal Housing Administration still faces challenges ahead, the agency has already taken a number of significant steps to mitigate risk and increase the solvency and strength of the mortgage-insurance fund. That’s according to National Association of REALTORS® President Gary Thomas, who testified today before the U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity about the future of the FHA. “Realtors® believe that recent increases to premiums, increased down payments for some borrowers and greater risk management controls will help to substantially improve

With tight mortgage lending standards preventing well-qualified home buyers from obtaining home loans and impeding the housing and economic recovery, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently expressed support for congressional efforts to reform the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) but urged lawmakers to proceed in a cautious manner to avoid any disruptions to the nation’s housing finance system. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, NAHB First Vice Chairman Kevin Kelly, a builder and developer from Wilmington, Del., points out the vital role