1. Obama has pledged to stabilize the housing markets with an aggressive stimulus plan, and according to CNBC today, continued massive buyout of bad mortgages. It's all part of his "Big Bang" inaugural plan.
2. The Fed, by essentially dropping interest rates to 0% will continue to loosen credit by pushing mortgage interest rates towards 4.50%, a target 30-year fixed rate that has gelled in the consumer minds. Once that rate hits 4.50%, consumers will likely consider that rate the bottom (they will likely not see again in their lifetime) and will jump off the fence.
3. Housing starts continue to drop to record lows, easing inventory pressure.

Through our Social Media Marketing Workshops, we've been working with real estate professionals systematically to build their online presence without necessarily blogging. The objective is to leverage the social media tools - blogs, Twitter, Delicious, Friendfeed, Feedfuze - to continuously "broadcast" expertise in their local housing markets, and capture consumer eyeballs who need this real time data to pull the trigger on their transaction.

The next marketing step is to build the websites and social networks that generate traffic to augment online presence. We're pointing to Homescopes as a template for the next generation of independently and cooperatively run breaking news hyperlocal real estate sites.

"Together with Domus Consulting Group, we developed one of the first independent blog networks for hyperlocal real estate information, Homescopes, and launched it in 2007. We're now positioning Homescopes to be the leading breaking news source for the Northern California housing markets, and expect that consumers will be compelled to follow our collective news feeds before they pull the trigger. The best part about the Homescopes experience is the auto-pilot factor; development was easy and once launched, we ignored it and let it distribute our content for us."

"We're now expanding Homescopes to 100 agents, and believe it will become a valuable lead generating online asset in its own right. Anybody can develop a "Homescopes" for their market and reap the benefits of owning your own online marketing resource. This really is the new wave to become a successful real estate agent."

Marian S. Bennett, Realtor

ColdwellBanker

http://www.mariansbennett.com/

(650) 712-2460

From Financial Times - Chinese Property Hunters to Raid US:

Chinese bargain hunters are preparing to descend on American cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, where homeowners have suffered some of the steepest price falls in the US.

SouFun, the biggest real estate website in China, is organising a trip next month to look at properties in California and possibly Nevada. Liu Jian, the company’s chief operating officer, said about 300 people had expressed interest in the idea in the three days since it was advertised, though the company would take only a small group on the first trip.

Have global investors given up on stocks and looking at which asset class seems to be hitting bottom first? A case can be made with US real estate - a transparent investment (compared to other countries like China) that seems now on the verge of being propped up by the Fed/Treasury's "low interest rate and kitchen sink" strategy to stabilize the housing markets.

Detractors say lower mortgage rates won't really help when nobody can put up the down payments... Plunge in Mortgage Rates won't End Housing Slump

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on the HomeGain blog a 9-step list on how to adapt a micro-blogging approach to a blog.  I agree the steps describe a completely different way of creating an online presence than through the traditional "write a three paragraph blog article" 2-3 times per week. This alternative method focuses on developing a more continuous (even hourly), active online presence that consumers interested in breaking local real estate news may want to follow. Since it's a new marketing approach, I expect a lot of debate.

Louis of HomeGain counters on his Active Rain blog that none of the AgentView agents have implemented the approach... that's because the method is brand new. We've been working with 150 bloggers and agents on developing this "social media marketing" strategy (partially documented at our #domus Twitter-based collaborative group), so we expect to see proof of concept shortly.

Here's a "reblog" of the HomeGain blog article (again, thanks to Louis and his gang for developing a great blog):

Here’s some quick advice for AgentView real estate agents to manage that new blog you may not know what to do with:

1. Blog articles are great but they do take time to write. Generally, the first ideas new bloggers have for topics - how-to’s, hyperlocal news - have been done before by other bloggers. It’s hard to differentiate yourself starting up a blog.
2. So do something different. Think like a journalist; watch out for real-time housing market news and be the first to report it.
3. Take notes at the tour marketing meetings, subscribe to the feeds of local online news and real estate publications.
4. Think in sound bites. Whenever you hear something interesting, write a sentence or two in the blog. Be efficient, don’t take more than 3 minutes per idea. Use a cellphone to write it if you’re in a tour meeting or open house.
5. When you see an interesting article online, cut and paste the article title and create a link to it.
6. If you write down several ideas per day, you soon accumulate a whole portfolio of ideas and facts that will be displayed on the blog. This content is just as revealing about how you develop business and help clients as blog articles.
7. You become a go-to source for your market. Prospects will come back again and again to see your new “sound bites”. After all, you’re the only one reporting on a daily basis… this is compelling to a committed home buyer or seller. Analogy - if I’m doing a stock purchase, I’d much rather analyze it in real time on Marketwatch.com than pick up the current Business Week magazine.
8. You’ll soon realize you can expand on the sound bites to construct more detailed blog articles. You’ll lose your writer’s block.
9. Finally, it’s easier to automate the whole process of “reporting” using a variety of micro-blogging and bookmarking applications like Twitter , Friendfeed, Tumblr, Delicious and Diigo. This is another story.