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With the increasing downward spiral of the economy and resulting record unemployment rate, many homeowners face foreclosure in their near future. In the past, most banks wouldn’t lift a finger to help troubled homeowners, and if they did, it typically wasn’t until they were already behind on their mortgage. With the high cost banks must shell out due to foreclosure they are now changing their tune. According to The Real Estate Bloggers Bank of America plans to proactively modify 630,000 loans totaling $100 billion. Now homeowners who are seriously delinquent “AND” those likely to become seriously delinquent will have the opportunity to receive this new streamlined loan modification.

The question to ask is why did it take a financial crisis for banks to proactively help homeowners stay in their homes when signs of trouble were in the forecast? There are many stories out there of homeowners reaching out to lenders to get help when they saw trouble coming, to no avail. “If your not late, we can’t help you” was the previous mantra. I wonder if these new types of policies will continue once the financial crisis subsides. I guess we can wait and see…

Welcome to the 120th Edition of The Carnival of Real Estate. We are honored to be hosting the carnival for the 2nd time. As a technology company we stay very interested in technology’s impact on the real estate industry. Keeping with that focus, I decided the criteria for my top post would be one that focused on the topic of  Real Estate Professionals and their involvement with Social Media. Many great posts were submitted this week, but only one touched on Social Media. So I have one winner for the week and honorable mentions for the other great entries.

The Top Post and Winner of the Realty Thought of the Week Award goes to Dustin Luther for his entry : The trouble with Marc’s approach to Twitter. In this post Dustin examines an approach to social media engagement for real estate professionals:

However, on a recent conversation, we were talking about where he’s getting his business and he mentioned Facebook (he’s very active on Facebook and MySpace having uploaded thousands of photos and shared countless stories).  Says his friends on Facebook have been treating him well lately sending him great clients and he’d love to get more.  But he doesn’t consider those “internet” leads since the clients typically come to him on a recommendation from a friend.

Honorable Mentions to other Great Posts:

• Peyman Aleagha discusses the value of text messaging for Real Estate Professionals
• Doug Willis wrote a funny story about Real Estate Agents seeking a Bailout
• Patrick Duffy takes us on a Review of 2008 and a look ahead
• Jim Reppond showed us a cool thermography tool used for home inspections
• Riley Smith discussed how remodeling might not pay, but will help sell your house
• Diane Tuman gives us a look into houses that sit because of bad design and blue carpet
• Shawna Ebersole showed us there are still options to buy a home without a down payment

A few weeks back Mashable featured a new start-up by the name of Dwellicious. Apparently this new service will work very similar to that of Delicious ( a social bookmarking site), but optimized for the real estate niche. According to Mashable  Dwellicious is optimized to work with the following: Century21, Coldwellbanker, Frontdoor.com, Har.com, Homes.com, Realtor.com, Redfin, Remax, Rentals.com, Trulia, Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow. No mentions of eppraisal.com or Hoodeo just yet, but we shall have to do something about that.

In the article the author seems sure Dwellicious’ future is in the hands of the real estate agents. I can see why with the dynamic updates on property listings. An agent could very well begin to bookmark prospective properties for clients and the changes over time are automatically updated letting them keep track of price changes, new photos, etc. This will make a great additional service where they can share their bookmarks with any clients in their area.

“I can’t get the price down for the home you want now, but I will monitor it for you and you can check the status of this home via my Dwellicious bookmark. Here is the link…”

Dwellicious is due to launch on January 7th 2009 at the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in New York City.

Have you been wondering how you can leverage your following on social networks to help promote your business & services? iList is the latest online tool for managing your online marketing campaigns to social networks and the web in general. Real Estate professionals and online marketers are strongly focusing their advertising efforts towards social networks. iList integrates with popular web services like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, and even Craigslist

Now you can create an online ad similar to Craigslist and distribute it through most of your social networks for all your contacts to see. iList also has a built in sharing feature which allows your social network contacts to share your listing with all their contacts, creating some what of a viral effect. This is just another great way to integrate yourself with the web by allowing the people in your circle to help you promote your business.

In case you haven’t heard, there is a device out there these days by the name of iPhone.  If you’re not currently using one you may just want to reconsider. The iPhone is making life easier and more efficient for professionals and consumers across the board. With the emergence of the Apple App Store, many professions are getting turbocharged by the useful applications that are developed daily by existing companies. Let’s look at one in particular from Trulia.

“Use your iPhone to search all homes for sale near you, find nearby open houses after Sunday brunch, or daydream about your favorite beachfront getaway. Scroll through the color photos or see results on a local map. See full property details and then get directions from Google. It’s just that easy and it’s free! It works great on the iPhone 3G, the original iPhone and the iPod touch. Your home buying experience will never be the same.” -Trulia

Instead of fighting this technology or avoiding Trulia for fear of losing leads, why not harness it to enhance your relevancy and offerings to your prospects? Real estate sites are becoming more and more popular by the day as consumers want information on demand, and there is always a need for pros to provide guidance and insight. The next time you’re scheduling an open house with a client, provide a real-time, dynamic tour by knowing where the homes are in the area they are interested in. Check out the video…

As a real estate professional your main focus in business has to be people. Converting those people into clients can be a tedious process which heavily weighs on trust and reputation. In the past the main avenue for getting new leads and networking was handing out business cards whenever possible. With the increase of social networks and the Web 2.0 culture, real estate pros must engage people where they frequent – the web.

So I guess you’re wondering what this has to do with business cards? There’s a neat tool I want to share that encompasses both worlds of live interaction and social networking online. It’s called a dropcard, and it allows you to give people you meet your business card via text message or over the web. Not only does it allow you to give your contact and business information, it also enables you to connect with these new contacts via the various social networks you have a presence in. I didn’t mention the awesome functionality that’s built into this process to integrate contacts directly into the iPhone, but I will have to save that for a future post…

Last week LotandHome.com launched a new listing site focused on new homes and lots, but with a twist. Anyone can register with the site and get a “Rebate Voucher.” Bring the voucher to the builder and get a “cash back equaling 1% of the purchase price”. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea (who doesn’t like $1k coupons ).
From the Press Release:
“Completely non-competitive LotandHome offers benefits to the buyer, the homebuilder and the real estate agent. Homes sold through LotandHome.com carry a three percent commission from the participating builders. The new homebuyer receives a 1% cash rebate, 1% goes into national advertising for the website and 1% is allocated toward operational expenses and profits.”

A new real estate listing site called BeatYouThere.com launched yesterday (inman) and it’s adding a social twist. BeatYouThere users can search for other users (buyers, sellers, investors, etc), rate other users, comment on properties (and users), and connect with friends. It’s a novel idea, however while navigating the site I found some of the social aspects/comments/etc buried and the other social features haven’t officially launched yet (marked coming soon).

Another StreetView Launch:
Today, RealEstate.com launches property searches with integrated StreetView (from Inman).

Choices:
If you are developing a Real Estate 2.0 site then you have a hard choice ahead. Do you integrate Google’s StreetView or Microsoft’s Birds EyeView? Hey, at least we have choices.

Product Launches:
Last week, Trulia was the first to announced the integration of Google’s Street View (FOREM). Today, DotHomes also announces the integration of Google’s Street View (see below).

“DotHomes.com (DotHomes), the real estate search engine, today announced that it has implemented Google’s Street View to its US listings. This application adds to the already extensive list of real estate search functions including videos, maps, and aerial views, which home buyers can use to facilitate their real estate search. The “Street” button can be found below each individual property listing alongside other search functions such as Save, Add Video, Aerial and Map.” -Release