Daily Archives: April 18, 2013

Southern California washes away foreclosure impact | Cross River NY Real Estate

The median price paid for a house in Southern California rose 23.4% from a year earlier, representing a 56-month high in March, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.

The median sales price for the six-county Southland region was $345,000, up 8% from $320,000 in February and up 23.4% from $280,000 one-year prior.

The previous median high was $348,000 in July 2008.

“Price measures continue to rise for two simple reasons,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president. “First, demand for homes has risen at a time when the available supply is unusually low. Prices have had nowhere to go but up in many areas. Second, the gains are especially high right now because of the change in market mix: Sales of lower-cost homes have fallen at the same time activity in the higher price ranges has risen.”

According to a report by DataQuick, sales of mid- to high-end homes shot up this spring as the impact of foreclosures continued to fade. 

Despite a sharp drop in sub-$300,000 deals, total sales were the highest they’ve been in six years for the month of March. 

A total of 20,581 new and resale houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month, DataQuick reported. This marked a 29.1% jump from 15,945 sales in February and a 3.1% increase from 19,953 in March 2012

More young couples buy a home before getting married | Katonah NY Real Estate

The local CBS affiliate out of Minneapolis says a home is the new engagement ring. In fact, if you look at the behavior of more young American couples, their first step towards lifelong companionship is purchasing a home together, not a ring.

Citing a Coldwell Banker study, CBS says a quarter of married couples in the 18-to-34 age range bought a home before getting married

4 ways to show you care – giving back with social media | Bedford Hills Realtor

Social media strategy. Social ROI. Influencer marketing. Social capital. Sometimes the head-spinning buzzwords that have come to define our usage of social media can make the simplest things confusing and frustrating. This is not one of those posts!

Whether your “strategy” is personal or professional, social media is the platform that blends our personal relationships and connections. In between the likes, comments, followers and friends, listings, open houses, birthdays etc, real life happens. Sometimes it’s not nice. Sometimes it breaks your heart. Sometimes it elates you. It’s in these moments where empathy, trust and care for one another really shows itself, and yet, sometimes, we feel ill-equipped to reach over the boundaries of “strategy” and just be ourselves. So this is just a few simple ways you can cross the boundaries and show someone you truly care

Mastering Mobile Productivity in from Lead to Close | Bedford NY Realtor

I think it’s safe to say that we can all be a little “app” crazy! When it comes to real estate apps, it’s hard to really get down to the best ones for actually managing your business from lead to close. As an agent or broker, you manage your calendar, leads that come in from your website, inspection reports, files, paperwork, client communications, signatures in contracts and offers, the list goes on and on.

In this webinar Max Pigman from realtor.com and I demo the BEST apps actually used in the field by agents across the country. These are just a FEW of the apps, we didn’t even have time to make it through to the second half of the “day in life of a real estate agent” but that gives us more great information for another webinar which I look forward to!

Watch the recording below and give us your feedback! Do YOU have any apps that you can’t live without? Let us know below!

Use Google Authorship to Improve SEO and Drive Traffic | Pound Ridge Realtor

Don’t miss a huge branding opportunity: Link your Google+ profile to the content you create

google authorship SEO SERP traffic branding Use Google Authorship to Improve SEO and Drive Traffic Google is looking to put user identity at the forefront of a number of its products, including search. They are trying new ways to authenticate quality links. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt discusses this in his upcoming book, “The New Digital Age”, writing that profile verification will be directly linked to search engine rankings:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online
profiles will be ranked higher than content without such
verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking
on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining
anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

As you know from reading this blog, creating a brand is incredibly valuable for building and strengthening relationships via social media and otherwise. People have more trust in recommendations from their circle of “friends”, including companies they follow on social networks. Google Authorship has made it easier for authors and businesses to get their brands in front of prospective customers and improve ranking — they can now represent themselves alongside their content within Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). Establishing a direct link between you and your articles or posts enables Google to display your picture next to the titles and descriptions of your site’s content so you stand out from the crowd.