Recently in Current state of real estate Category

A couple of days ago in an article for Inman News entitled "Realtor® Ranks Swell but their Pocketbooks Don't", Glen Roberts reported what we agents already knew: that despite the huge increase in housing prices over the last ten years with the accompanying public perception that agents are making gobs of money, the truth is quite different.

In actuality, Realtor®'s median income was down 3.2% in 2006 compared to 2004, while their 2004 median income had dropped 5.6% from 2002. Roberts quoted Chang-Tai Hsieh, an associate professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley, who said that the median-income drop for Realtors®

"is clearly driven by the fact that there has been excessive entry in the last two years. You would expect to see some exit in the near future, but as soon as housing prices pick up we're going to see more entry and then that's going to drive down (income)."

One of my goals in writing my book "Ripping the Roof off Real Estate" as well as in developing the Accredited Consultant in Real Estate (ACRE)™ course for agents is to see the real estate industry evolve similarly to how the financial industry did 20 years ago.

This past Sunday, the cover article of Parade Magazine was entitled "Do You Have a Better Idea?"  The article talked about how solving problems can be accomplished by simply looking at the issue at hand and "thinking out of the box". From the "Forever Postage Stamp" to increasing the supply of organ donors, the article offered many examples of how we can devise simple solutions to big problems by simply borrowing an idea from another country, industry, or context and applying it to a problem.

A similar point was made by my colleague and friend, Ken Deshaies, in the foreword of my new book "Ripping the Roof off Real Estate". Ken noted that the authors of the book "Blue Ocean Strategy" described how major business successes over time have come from innovative business leaders re-imagining the business at hand.