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