Local to your specific area--and refreshed monthly--the SmartBroker Report summarizes key real estate sales data, including the latest home price trends, sales transactions by type, total sales today vs. last year, negative equity sales, foreclosure trends, and REO inventory trends.

Articulating what you want in your real estate brokerage is pretty straight-forward.

One of your key marketing tools is your website. It’s a good idea from time to time to take stock of the content and design of your website to be sure your marketing message is being delivered effectively. Your website serves multiple audiences – are you speaking to each of them?

If you haven’t heard of it yet, the Consumer Hourglass Theory is the idea that the highest income households have managed through the recession relatively unscathed, while the middle and lower classes have had, best case scenario, a rougher go of it. As the theory goes, this has put consumer spending into two categories: high end and low end. The middle and lower class are now spending less and opting to shop at stores and buy products typically targeted at lower income earners. This is while the highest income earners are still able and willing to shop at high end retailers and make “luxury” purchases.

Every brokerage should keep track of the competition in their marketplace, and in adjacent markets. Keeping tabs on other brokers in your local area is a no-brainer, but if you are considering expansion – or believe that you have an outside threat that may expand into your area, you need to keep your head up and your eyes open.

If you look at your web statistics for your agent or broker website, you will find that the majority of search engine traffic you get comes from Google. Google is the most popular search engine in the world by a wide margin. According to Nielsen, Google is the only website on the planet that has more traffic than Facebook.

I spent much of my sales career selling to Fortune 500 companies where the users of the solutions we provided were employees. One of the first ah-ha’s for me in the real estate industry was selling to companies where most of the users were the independent contractors. Generally-speaking, the agents that represent residential real estate brokerages, are the face to the customer, and earn the bulk of the revenue, are independent contractors.

I’ve come across more than enough reports lately about an overall decline in home ownership and a marked increase in people favoring renting over buying a home. Certainly, the overall confidence level in purchasing real estate as an investment is questionable at best…but not for everyone.