By Bryon Ellington, Chief Products Officer and Roger Higle, Course Writer, Keller Williams Realty International

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
- Thomas A Edison

How many of us know someone who has foreclosed on their home, or is at least close to being in foreclosure? If there were 100 of us sitting in a room, 40 or more of you would have raised your hand.

As most Americans are aware, more than 40 percent of all residential real estate transactions are either foreclosed homes, or are on the road to foreclosure. Of those “on the road,” nearly one-third become short sales in which a homeowner and an agent negotiate a settlement with the homeowner’s lender to sell the property – and settle the homeowner’s debt – for less than the amount owned.

While some indicators point to positive momentum, the fact is best estimates from data firms such as CoreLogic and RealtyTrac report there are conservatively 4.5 million homeowners who are in default on mortgage payments in the United States right now.

That’s almost as many as were sold in all of 2010!
It’s time to get on board and help.

Continue reading ‘Short Sales: Do you have what it takes?’

How can you better present your information to your audience? That was a question the KW Research department recently asked themselves. They were reading Yale University Professor Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, looking for great ideas for displaying research data to maximize the presentations they create for agents.

I know…charts and graphs aren’t the most exciting subject and may not strike you as being relevant to what we do in the real estate industry, but there is a pearl in this that can be helpful to your bottom line.

Continue reading ‘Why Less is More When Presenting to Clients’