NAR Exhibition Hall: Orlando 2008

I decided to attend the NAR conference at the last minute, using Continental rewards and Marriott points to make it a ‘free’ trip. The weather was fabulous in Orlando, but the conference attendance was down….way down. I have no hard numbers to substantiate that, but after attending the last 10 conferences I could see and feel the difference in crowd mass.

The vendor count was down from 700+ to just 500+ in the exhibition hall, and quite a number of booths weren’t even manned by company representatives. The opening night of the exhibition hall was greeted with very light foot traffic, surprising since this is usually one of the busiest times for vendors.

There was strong presence by various video and virtual tour companies and they all seemed to draw a lot of visitors and were making sales. The France-based company, PREVISITE, seemed to atract a lot of attention at its orange-colored booth by demonstrating its patent-pending fish eye lens and technology to make virtual tours simple to shoot, upload and distribute. Keep an eye on Previsite as they expand their marketing prowess throughout the industry.

Click the link to see the ‘virtual tour’ I took of the exhibition ha

real-estate-search-portals

Real estate search has become mainstream to the American consumer. Over 40 million ‘unique visitors’ each month log onto one or more of the top ten real estate search sites. Online advertising revenue is the brass ring that each of these portals seek. Their success is largely dependant on securing the greatest quality and quantity of property listings, and providing user-friendly tools and ‘widgets’ to enhance the user experience.

This PPT provides a brief overview of the leading search portals. TW

I hope you will enjoy this PPT presentation which I presented to the National Settlement Services Summit in Cleveland this past July, 2008. Title companies are just now considering how to become ‘customer centric’ in the marketing of their products and services. Travis

customer-centric-title

Three of the top five title insurance underwriters reported their Q2 earnings this week. While First American reported net income of some $42M, LandAmerica reported losses of $50M+ and Stewart reported losses of $40M+. For Stewart and LandAmerica, they each have lost over $80M YTD!

Meanwhile, it was reported that the Mercury Companies from Colorado have terminated 6,000 employees and closed hundreds of their title company offices throughout the Western United States. You can imagine how many home buyers/sellers will not be closing on time, and hopefully all of Mercury’s title and escrow transactions will be transferred to a competent title underwriter.

My wife Kayelin is affected by Mercury’s closings as one of their United Title offices here in The Woodlands, TX was processing one on her larger transactions. The office shut down at 6:10pm two nights ago and there still is no clear indication where her transaction file will be transferred. What a mess!

I wonder if Realtors and consumers should select their title/closing company with the same scrutiny as selecting a national mortgage lender (instead of a small, local mortgage broker) in these challenging times? What do you think?

My wife, Kayelin, is a top-producing Realtor for Coldwell Banker United in The Woodlands, TX, a suburb of Houston. On a recent transaction, the buyer’s agent called Kayelin to ask how her career and business was going, as she was having difficulties making ends meet. After Kayelin replied that she was working with many clients, the buyer’s agent asked if she could borrow $2,500 from Kayelin until their co-op transaction closed!

Don’t you think a home seller or home buyer would/should be concerned if their Realtor was not financially able to run their business and ‘make ends meet’>

What an interesting event last week. Over 1,400 attendees looking for the ‘next big thing’ and networking with peers and new acquaintances.