HotPads Daily :: The Official Blog of HotPads.com

84th Carnival of Real Estate- The Fools Edition

Welcome to the 84th Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate!

We are honored to host the carnival again, it is always a great and informative experience.

Well, without further ado, the staff here at HotPads have selected the top posts for the week from more than 3 dozen submissions. 

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

1. HotPads Launches Featured Listings (HotPads Daily)
2. HotPads Distributes to Even More Sites (HotPads Daily)
3. tie- HotPads Welcomes Toll Brothers and Long & Foster Is The Newest Broker on HotPads (HotPads Daily)

We'd like to thank everyone for submitting their articles and remind everyone to submit their articles for the next edition by Sunday at 3pm EST.

Oh, and APRIL FOOL'S!

Here are the REAL results... no foolin'... starting out with the top 5 articles for the week:

What is the Best Way to Buy a Foreclosed Property?
This is a great article that answers the question of the best ways to find foreclosure properties.  Nigel  Swaby walks you through all the basics of foreclosure, as well as offers some very insightful ways to locate foreclosure properties at every stage of the process.

We Salute Your, Real Estate Agent of Genius

Is it a wine cellar or a wine rack in a basement?  Well, I guess that's all in the eye of the camera holder.  Doug Willis gives a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of some real estate agents in the mode of "Real Men of Genius."  I can just hear David Bickler shouting out the chorus as the announcer proclaims " So snap open a cold Bud Light, you Ansel Adams of the basement."

The Mortgage Haiku Collage
The award for the most creative (and inspirational to boot) has to go to Mike Mueller and the 17 haikus making up "The Mortgage Haiku Collage."  Not only did he pen 17 individual thoughtful, interesting, or humorous haikus, he dropped them onto Japanese Water Colors that can easily be printed out and taped to your monitor :)

It Ain't All Pretty... But it is Darn Good Marketing!
Craig Schiller discusses the merits of staging your home, above and beyond making it 'pretty.'  Craig argues that it is a marketing decision that is "more about the process of strategically setting up (merchandising) a property in a manner that makes it not only easy for buyers to tour, but also creates a way for their eyes and hearts to connect to it with a powerfully effective first impression that lingers and stays with them.

 Strategic Real Estate Investing: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

Scott Roemermann sets the record straight about real estate investing and the information generally available.  He outlines the problems facing the real estate investor and offers advice on having a "sound strategy at each phase of business," getting started and the growth stage.

The Stand-Outs

Solutions To A House That Won't Sell
The Money Blue Book has a great article that discusses the top 6 reasons houses won't sell, as well as offers advice on how to maximize the value of your home and position yourself to sell.

Top 10 Ways Find the Best Off-Market Deals in Your Area
DeeinAustin has a "top 10" list of ways to find off-market deals on a home, land, or commercial real estate property.  From "driving for dollars" to browsing online investor forums, she provides some great tips and insight to finding what you are looking for.

Short Sales: Four Tips to Get You an Accepted Offer

Shailesh Ghimire offers some really great advice for those who are interested in buying a short sale property, as short sales and bank owned properties are in such high demand these days.  These tips will give you a better chance of closing on a short sale property and should give you the basic information you need to get your offer accepted.

Making your home green - where to start

Nathan Blair over at the Salt Lake City Utah Real Estate Blog offers some great advice for making your home green.  From replacing the lightbulbs and shower heads and faucets to planting trees, he offers practical advice everyone (and the environment!) can benefit from.

 7 Keys for a Successful OPEN HOUSE!

Andy Hodes provides some great pointers for those who are staging an open house.  Among these are ideas on how to arrange and decorate your house, what you should provide to make them feel at home, and where you AND your pets should be during it.

Nordstroms, Directions, Site Maps And SEO?
Cliff Jacobson examines the importance of a good site map by analogizing it to Nordstrom's customer service motto of "never walk a customer."   He demonstrates the importance of providing for your customers, as well as budgeting in for SEO.  After all, he states, if If you don't show them (the customers) where to go, they'll show you where to go. An extra click, is a click away."

Real Estate Financial Model- First Development
Terry offers some sound financial planning advice for those who are entering into a real estate investment or development project.  Terry shares first-hand experience and offers a model for others to follow.

Real Estate Investing
Jeff Light gives some great basic tips, strategies and secrets for those getting involved in real estate investing.

How And Why To Consider A Purchase Money Mortgage

Joe Manausa examines "How and Why To Consider a Purchase Money Mortgage."  After all, "in today's market," homeowners need to consider all creative solutions to making their home more desirable and affordable to potential purchasers.

Power Lease Clauses for your Investment Property
How complete are your leases?  Scott discusses various clauses that you may wish to include in your lease agreement with tenants in "Power Lease Clauses for your Investment Property."  He offers some good advice and often over-looked clauses that may protect you as the property manager.

The Notables

Your Family Financial Planning --  Pasadena Financial Planner
CBB: The Art of Setting Buyer's Agency Compensation on a Listing -- Dan Melson
Sell Your House Fast and Make More Money Doing It -- American Consumer News
The Best Mutual Funds Have NO Sales Loads and NO 12b-1 Fees -- Best No Load Funds

Thank you for the opportunity to host this 84th Carnival of Real Estate.  We received a ton of great listings this week and had trouble narrowing down the field.  Next week's carnival will be hosted by Real Central VA so get those submissions in!

HotPads.com Launches Featured Listings

With our innovative map-based search,  HotPads has become one of the most popular websites for  housing shoppers, with millions of visitors looking to find that one perfect place.  And those housing shoppers have quite the selection, as we have amassed over 100,000 unique rental listings and 1,000,000 homes for sale! 

But with so many high quality listings on HotPads, housing providers have been looking for new ways to make their listings stand out.  Well, now they can with HotPads Featured Listings.

What are Featured Listings?
Featured listings are a way for housing providers to spotlight their property and ensure that our users see their property.  In fact, Featured Listings are clicked and viewed on average 5 times as frequently as non-featured listings.

We display your properties on our maps as visually stunning building icons and can't-miss preview panes:

Pricing:
Advertising is not one-size fits all.  We think that advertising should be customizable to each housing provider based on their individual demands, needs, and budgets.  Because of this, HotPads has initated a pricing plan that puts the housing provider in charge.  Basically, housing providers can specify their own Cost Per Day (CPD) for each of their properties, as well as the number of days they wish the featured campaign to last. 

"How Does It Work?"

Well, the way we determine how often to display your listing is on an "Auction Basis."  Say, for example, you set your maximum Cost Per Day for a particular listing to be $4.  Another provider in the same market with the same type of listing sets their's to be $1.  We will then display your Featured Listing 4 times as frequently as those of the person with a CPD of $1.

(If you have any questions about pricing, you can take a look at the Featured Listing page, send us an email at FeatureMe@hotpads.com, or just give us a call at 202.232.1581 and we'll help you!)

Don't forget that regular listings on HotPads are still COMPLETELY FREE of charge.  So to get the most exposure for your company, have all of your properties shown on HotPads!

Helpful Links:
More About Featured Listings
Step-by-Step Guide to Featuring Your Listings
Tracking Your Campaigns
Feature Your Listings

HotPads Distributes to Even More Sites

Property managers and real estate agents who list their properties on HotPads.com have long taken advantage of the additional leads and convenience of the free HotPads listing distribution service.  By simply posting listings to HotPads, their apartment vacancies and homes for sale are seen on over a dozen of the most important housing search sites on the web.

HotPads has recently added even more partner sites, including properazzi.com and rentBits.

As always, HotPads wants to thank everyone in the real estate community that has helped to give HotPads over 100,000 rental listings and more than ten times as many houses for sale.

Long & Foster is the newest Broker on HotPads!

If you've been hearing gongs going off around Washington, DC then the noise is probably coming from the HotPads Mansion.  We're celebrating because Long & Foster Real Estate, one of REALTOR® Magazine’s top companies, is now showing homes for sale on HotPads.com.

Long & Foster has long been known as one of the most successful real estate marketing companies and their agents are some of the best in the business.  We appreciate Long & Foster taking notice of the amazing growth in users that HotPads is having and we'll be watching as the leads come in from our audience.

For anyone in the industry needing to get more leads and close more deals, HotPads has the most comprehensive array of free and paid advertising programs for real estate and an eager audience that knows HotPads.com is the place to find your place.

HotPads Welcomes Toll Brothers

We are happy to announce that Toll Brothers, one of the nation's top builders of luxury homes, is now a part of HotPads.com.  Home buyers looking  for new homes for sale in two dozen states can now browse these premier properties on our site and see photos, floorplans and maps.

HotPads now hosts over 100,000 apartments and rental property listings along with over one million homes for sale.

Home builders, real estate brokers, apartment community managers and other companies with a sizable portfolio of homes are all invited to automate their listings on HotPads via our free XML data feed.

Connect with HotPads on LinkedIn

The great business networking website LinkedIn.com has recently launched a new feature allowing users to see profiles for over 160,000 companies, including HotPads.com.  These company profiles have lots of interesting information like descriptions, employee rosters and locations.

The real estate community is a huge fan of LinkedIn (just search for people with the title "Realtor") as a way to keep in touch with old colleagues and as source for new business leads.  LinkedIn has none of the potentially embarrassing personal pictures and "friends" that can accompany a Facebook or MySpace account.

If you're a property manager, real estate agent or other professional in the industry, add or update your profile and link up with your favorite member of Team HotPads.

Dow Surges 400 Points Behind More Fed Cuts

There aren't any stern bears in this circus.

Reacting to news of a .75% cut in a key interest rate by the Federal Reserve, Wall Street partied like it was last March, sending the Dow Jones Industrial average up by over 400 points today.  Also helping were better than expected numbers from big banks Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, easing the markets' concerns after the implosion of Bear Stearns and its buyout by JPMorgan.

This can also be good news for the housing market, if it helps to push mortgage rates lower and opens the credit spigot a little bit.  We'd love to think that we've gotten through the worst of the housing crisis, and even have signs of hope as we've already been seeing a sharp rise in searches for real estate for sale on HotPads.

National Guard Bomb Hits Apartment Building

Try explaining this to your property management company.

A National Guard fighter jet accidentally dropped a dummy bomb on Jeremy Isbell's Tulsa, Oklahoma apartment.  The jet was on a practice run and was supposed to kit a range near Salina, Kansas, according to a statement released Friday by the Oklahoma Air National Guard's 138th Fighter Wing.  Luckily no one was injured.

If Jeremy needs a place to stay while his electricity is restored and bathroom is fixed, there are a lot of great apartments for rent in Tulsa on HotPads.com.

See a YouTube video of Jeremy describing the incident here.

Real Estate is Still Booming. On TV.

There are only a few places not feeling the ill effects of the numerous maladies afflicting the real estate world; The gulf state of Dubai, foreclosure auctioneers and homes for sale on HotPads come to mind.  But TV programmers are really going all-in with housing-related projects.

Reality shows centered around home buying, house flipping and home renovation are all the rage on cable and network TV.

In two days, "Flip This House" will enter its fourth season on A&E.  That's not be be confused with  "Flip That House" on TLC or Bravo's "Flipping Out."   In January, Home & Garden's HGTV had its highest prime-time ratings ever.  Nine of its top 10 series are related to the real estate market.  And Extreme "Makeover: Home Edition" is still a hit.

Remarkably, no networks have picked up the pilot for "This is HotPads", in which a group of over-caffeinated web jockeys try to radically improve the housing search market with interactive maps.  Hilarity ensues.

Should You Walk Away? Website Helps with Foreclosures.

For only $995.00 (payable in three easy installments of $332.00)  You Walk Away will help struggling borrowers get through the foreclosure process.  With their Protection Plan and Kit you can "Unshackle yourself today  from a losing investment and use our proven method to Walk Away."

The company offers protection from collection agency phone calls, weekly foreclosure progress emails, enrollment in their credit repair plan and personal consultation with one of their real estate lawyers to ensure that the lender follows the letter of the law.

The site has raised a bit of controversy, as some say it encourages deadbeat behavior, which would further weaken the housing market.  Homeowners of the edge may just want to hold on to that grand and make a call to the Hope Now Alliance first.