A month ago, I received the strangest email ever: An agent in LinkedIn blasted an email to her connections announcing her next open house. Sadly, it was little more than a cut-and-paste of the abbreviation-dumb newspaper ad she probably also ran. No photos, nor punctuation. Not even a hyperlink.

More recently, a steady-stream of Facebook invitations have been arriving,  with impersonal introductions like, “If you know someone who needs a REALTOR in AnyTown, USA, send me your referrals!” Oh, sorry; I thought you wanted to be my friend.

But the social networking abuse reached a tipping point yesterday: It seems some virtual tour vendor has made it “quick and easy” to mass-post your tours across multiple networks at once.

Oh, goody: REALTORS are about to have no more friends.

Read the rest of this blog and join the conversation by clicking here.

Yesterday, President Obama announced he was prepared to break the law. After blaming the senior debt bondholders of Chrysler for pushing the company into Chapter 11, he sanctioned a plan to abrogate their covenants and force them to take pennies on their loaned dollar. No matter that their bonds were secured by the company’s assets. The rights of “speculators” are easily swept aside in populist frenzies. Notice how the President didn’t blink a teleprompter-eye when he stood with the union workers, the families and the communities - while transferring to them 55% control of the company assets. American lenders filled with American workers who loaned American savings to Chrysler for decades were expected to simply take massive losses. Apparently it’s no longer American to repay one’s debts. The Bully Pulpit declared “needs” more important than “rights.” And since mere mortals barely understand all this financial jargon, especially  REALTORS, the rule of law was quietly killed. Contracts, it seems, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on in America.

REALTORS had better beware.

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This isn’t the first President to simply throw contracts out the window. Franklin D. Roosevelt passed an executive order voiding contracts repayable in gold during the Great Depression. He further eroded the contract-relationship between Greenbacks and gold (essentially, treasury contracts) by setting the daily price of gold by fiat, from his bathtub each morning. Back then, millions of contracts held by bankers, speculators, lenders, retailers and other American citizens were instantly eviscerated. Today, the New New Deal improves this rewriting policy to not only abrogate contracts but quickly steal any available assets and transfer them to preferred political gangs. The United Auto Workers will receive five times the assets un-paid-for. Bondholders receive an ample serving of populist scorn.

What will be the effects of such government capriciousness? How will an open policy of disdain for contracts  chill the economy further - especially the housing industry?

To read the rest of this article, please visit is at http://www.matthewferrara.com/rss/contractjeopardy

Everyone knows about the 90/10 rule: 90% of the business is done by about 10% of REALTORS. Translated to a consumer experience, this means that most buyers and sellers have about a 1-in-10 chance of getting the “best performing” agent to sell their home or represent them in a purchase. Even a generous assessment of the business - quartiled for the top 25% of agents who generate more than $200,000 in commissions annually - leave the underperforming-bottom 75% of the business to muck up the works. And while banks, lenders, Fannie, Freddie, Frank and Dodd all share some blame for causing the current crisis, could it be that the “other” broken real estate market is the soft-underbelly of the brokerage industry itself?

Do we really need to answer that?

http://www.matthewferrara.com/blog/management/brokenrealtors

A recent quote from Walter Percy Chrysler has been stuck in my head lately: Most people never get ahead in life because when opportunity knocks, they are out back looking for four leaf clovers. These days, it seems like Chrylser’s perspective is particularly appropriate to the real estate industry crisis. In addition to merely waiting around for Uncle Sam, Freddie, Fannie and even China to revive the housing industry, most brokers are busy scurrying around looking for lucky charms to help them survive the downturn.

In fact, it’s even worse than usual - beyond burying statues and rearranging furniture - when we see brokers doing the absolute worst possible thing they should be doing right now: Recruiting the agents from failing firms. Did anyone every wonder to ask just why that firm was failing in the first place?

http://www.matthewferrara.com/blog/management/nextrealtors

Declaration of Internet Independence

Months ago, we reported to you that internet marketing was dead. That was August 2008, when MySpace overtook Yahoo in display ads totals for the month. Our argument then was that people prefer to interact with other people, even online, and that the original internet age of “blindly searching” the portals was dead. They just didn’t know it then. And for another seven months the world of SEO, PPC, page ranking and site relevancy made a few valiant attempts to remain relevant themselves. Yet today, David has finally slain Goliath: Advertising Age reports that Facebook has become a bigger source of traffic for some websites than Google.

How the mighty have fallen.

http://www.matthewferrara.com/next-generation/internetindependence

At first, I thought it was a joke, something to lighten the mood of an otherwise dour real estate industry. Yet a few clicks of the email invitation told me it wasn’t a joke, it was actually back by “popular demand” of a lot of REALTORS.  If I hurried, I could save a seat at the “all new and updated” course that would unlock my power colors and align my compass at a very affordable price. I couldn’t help it, and just laughed out loud.

Feng Shui for real estate is back. It’s being conducted in the Temples of Real Estate Associations across America. Even more incredibly, in some states it has been approved for Continuing Education, a sanctioned topic that deals with “consumer protection.”

http://www.matthewferrara.com/blog/nar/voodooyoutube

This video made me jump up out of my seat and cheer! Finally, a businessman who isn’t embarrassed by what he earns - and is willing to defend it in front of the mass purveyors of guilt, the Media. Every REALTOR should watch this clip and see what it looks like when someone stands up and says, Yes, dammit! I’m worth every penny! I may get paid a lot, but I create a LOT MORE value in return. We need a lot more of this kind of attitude in the industry these days - rather than the doom, gloom, hat-in-hand wimpishness that’s rotting our industry. From the inside out.

http://www.matthewferrara.com/blog/nar/defendyourpay