In November a subsidiary of HomeServices announced plans to pull listings from Trulia and Realtor.com. This syndication withdrawal may be among the first in a coming wave where brokerages and MLS decide to feed real estate listings only to sites that provide the most value.

The third-party real estate search business model does not reflect the brokerage business; they simply sell advertising in a manner of speaking.

The brokerage has thus far pulled its listings from Trulia, though the companies have devised a workaround that allows Edina agents to submit their own listings to Trulia if they choose. The brokerage is attempting to negotiate a similar workaround with Realtor.com before pulling its listings from that site.

Will listing syndication will be among the most controversial data issues in 2012?

Does deciding no to syndicate force consumers to the actual broker site, or miss the online target that relies on this exposure?

As the value of listing data is further assessed in 2012, multiple listing services may decide that value is worth a price, some experts said.

Taking control

If you don’t know where your listings are, you can’t track them. Rather than distributing their listings “anywhere and everywhere,” brokers are starting to take back more control of where their listings are distributed.

Today, bloggers are a main source of news for millions of readers. Their articles are typically better researched, more detailed, and more honest than newspaper or magazine articles. They may also be completely false, as bloggers do not fall under the same editorial scrutiny that media must comply with.

When something negative is said about your company through a blog, you may not find out about it until it has spread virally, doing extensive damage to your image, even if the information is not true. To combat this, you can use technology to keep an eye on what is being written about you and your company.

Technorati is a search engine designed specifically to search for blogs on the Internet using three types of searches: 1) keywords, 2) tags, and 3) blog directory.

Technorati also provides tools that allow you to keep on top of blog posts for specific subjects.

Here’s a small guide to keeping an eye on your business:

Search for your company on Technorati

Finding blogs that already contain some reference to your company can give you a rare look into your customers’ minds. People used to pay top dollar for market research that would take weeks to access this priceless information. Now you can see firsthand what your customers are saying, in real time.

Stay on top of your “social footprint”

Technorati allows you to save your searches as “watchlists.” Watchlists may be viewed in RSS format, which means they may be imported into an RSS reader to make it very easy to consistently keep track of who is writing about your company.

What do you do when you locate something?

When you find a blog that mentions your company, leave a comment on their blog. This lets them know that you respect them writing about you. If the post was negative, it also shows that real people from your company are reading what they’ve written, and are savvy enough to respond to it. Bloggers are almost always more cordial and less likely to be critical if they know they are being read by the person they are criticizing.

When someone writes something negative about you, it’s important to read all the comments before responding. You may find that a fan of your company has already defended you nicely and an “official” response may not be necessary. This happens more often than not, which is one of the biggest perks of today’s social media.

Have you ever had negative comments or reviews on your company’s social profiles? How did you handle it?

This year’s profile revealed these surprising statistics:

1. Bottomed out at last. Prices appear to be stabilizing in some areas. This is the first step in climbing out of the rocky bottom we have been in for the last several years.

2. Boomers are the key players. In 2010, due to the first-time homebuyer tax credit, the median age of first-time buyers dropped to 31. In many markets, the number of first-time buyers hovered at the 50 percent level. The smart move in 2011 was to market to Generation Y.

Over the last 12 months, however, there has been a substantial change that can have important ramifications for your business in 2012. In 2011, baby boomer purchases substantially surpassed the number of Generation Y buyer.

Why is this surprising? There are more Gen Yers than there are boomers. Generation Y is also at its peak buying age – marrying, establishing new households, and having children.

Furthermore, boomers are actively driving the second-home market. As a result, it may be smart to revisit your business plan for 2012 and to place more emphasis on working with boomers who are currently the dominant players in terms of purchasing.

3. More buyers are using agents. 89 percent of buyers purchased their home through a real estate agent or broker – that’s up from 69 percent in 2001. What are some ossible reasons?

Realtors shorten the search process when there are huge amounts of inventory on the market and people are pressed for time. Most likely, though, it’s the difficulty of the loan process both on the buyer’s side in terms of qualifying for a loan, and on the seller’s side based upon the appraisal process that marks the need for realtors.

4. Married couples or single female buyers? The trend since 2001 has been a substantial decline in the share of buyers who were married. From 2001-2008, the number of married couples purchasing homes dropped from 68 percent to 58 percent.

A historically high percentage of Gen Xers are actually unmarried. As a result, the market saw a huge proportion of single female buyers – the smart market niche for 2011.

In 2012, it’s an entirely different story. The number of single female buyers is still relatively high at 18 percent, but that’s the lowest number since 2004 and represents a reversal of a major trend. It’s time to focus on marketing that reaches couples and families in 2012.

5. Life changes drive real estate sales. The primary reason to purchase a home among repeat buyers is often because of life changes: the desire for a larger home, a job relocation or move, desire to be closer to family and friends, or a change in a family situation.

How will you focus on these 5 new developments for 2012 to reach more sales?

Sketches

Sometimes pictures don’t support the message you’re trying to convey with your clients. With Sketches, you can take a photo and then draw on it. For example, you might use arrows to point out certain features or write down the distance between two properties.

Around Me

Being able to give your clients instant information is essential. With this app you can quickly tell clients about the restaurants, banks, grocery stores and other shops in the area, making it much easier for a client to make a decision.

Walk Score

People in busy cities want to be able to walk to everything. This app will give you the ability to tell customers exactly how far the nearest restaurants, grocery stores, shopping and more are from their new home. It even has a built-in GPS so users will never have to type in an address to get results.

Real Estate by Smarter Agent

One of the biggest factors for an agent is knowing what comparables are selling for or what sellers are currently asking. Being able to access this information immediately is necessary in today’s instant gratification society. You’ll never believe how fast the contract can be drawn up once you download this app.

What apps help you in your real estate career?

It’s Not a Minor Issue

The problem seems to be growing.

In one senior community in Florida, 10 cases have been discovered in the past six months where children were living with relatives.  These families are faced with a choice of evicting the child or selling their home within a set amount of time.

It’s not surprising that there are more multigenerational households with the current economy, but bending the rules for even one child could get an age restricted community in serious trouble.

Up to 20 percent of residents in age restricted communities can be under the set residency age, but this exception is for adult children who inherit property. The rule is never used to accommodate minors. If a community is found to exceed the 20 percent limit, it could lose its exemption status.

There’s also the matter that senior communities aren’t equipped for children; there are plenty of safety hazards that would have to be addressed, such as golf cart transportation and swimming pool specifications and insurance.

Do you think there should be a policy created that both maintains age-restricted enforcement and considers extreme family hardship? Or should families in these situations have to choose between their homes and their children?

Let us know your thoughts by commenting below or on our Facebook page.

With that in mind, here are the five key issues as published by the Wall Street Journal that will determine the housing market in 2012:

1. Confidence and jobs: The housing market still needs the economy to add more jobs to stimulate demand for home purchases and to prevent mortgage delinquencies from rising. The good news is that housing is more affordable than it has been in decades. But many that are considering buying are not striking because they are concerned that the prices will continue to drop. Others don’t want to buy a house until they have more evidence that they’re not going to get laid off or see their hours cut back.

2. Foreclosures: Whether home prices hit a floor this year also relies on how banks manage a huge overhang of foreclosed homes that they haven’t yet taken back and resold. Banks and other mortgage investors own around 440,000 foreclosed properties, but there’s another 3.4 million loans in foreclosure or serious delinquency.

3. Rents: Apartment rents are rising as vacancy rates drop. If low mortgage rates aren’t enough to give urgency to buyers, rent hikes could accelerate their decisions to take the plunge. This is a good thing.

4. Mortgage credit and rates: Federal policymakers have taken extraordinary steps to keep mortgage rates low and federal-backed entities are responsible for backing nearly nine in 10 new mortgages. But it’s still hard for many buyers to get a loan because banks are demanding lots of documentation of borrowers’ incomes, and appraisals are tanking some deals. Banks will need to put their loan problems behind them before there’s much easing in lending standards.

5. Regulation: Many analysts don’t expect Congress to make major changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the election year, but several major regulatory changes could significantly reshape the future of the lending landscape in 2012.

Meanwhile, the regulator that oversees Fannie and Freddie is revamping the way that mortgage companies are paid for collecting loan payments.

What other key things do you think will affect the market this year?

ActiveRain, the largest blogging platform and professional social network in real estate, conducted a survey of 1,910 real estate professionals asking the simple question of “what is the most effective real estate marketing or advertising that you do?”

Here are some highlights from the survey results and how you can make it work for your community:

• Referrals and word of mouth were the most preferred, making up an overwhelming 26% of the responses.
• Second place was tied with 13% of responses: Blogging and traditional Direct Mail. This includes postcards, mailers, and printed newsletters.
• Next 12% of responders listed Internet Marketing as a general category. It can be assumed that this category is comprised mostly of pay-per-click ads, such as Google AdWords.
• Finally, networking received 8% of the responses. This includes partner referrals and face-to-face meetings.

Most Effective Real Estate Marketing Plans

Even in this digital age, real estate professionals continue to favor more traditional offline, hand-to-hand marketing techniques: referrals, direct mail, networking, and open houses. Blogging is viewed as an effective medium as well, but it must provide value in order to stay in that 13%.

Most Effective Real Estate Websites

Real Estate professionals polled consistently listed ActiveRain, Craigslist, Facebook, Zillow and Google as the most effective sites for their business.  There were very few mentions of WordPress, though as an agency we find it to be at the top of the list for delivering valuable information and gaining a targeted audience. Noticeably absent were Trulia and Realtor.com.

What do you think? Do you agree with the poll? Is there something that works for you that the survey left off?

If you need help with your 2012 marketing plan, let us create a balanced, effective mix of traditional and new media customized for your community’s needs.

CBS News strongly feels that the nation’s real estate balance sheet is slowly turning around.

To further quote the positive article, the official unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent, even as the labor participation rate dropped to about 62 percent. But the better news is that the U-6, which is the broadest measure of unemployment, fell below 16 percent for the first time since the Great Recession started.

Of course turning around the housing market begins with well-paying jobs so that people can once again afford a mortgage and insurance premiums.

Fannie Mae chief economist feels that people will not undertake the financial obligation of homeownership until they are positive their personal financial situations are on the upswing. But according to their November National Housing Survey homeowners do believe their home value will rise at least 0.2 percent over the next year.

Another positive sign is that interest rates continue to hover at a historic low level, saving homeowners who can refinance hundreds or thousands of dollars per year.

New construction still leads the industry in the slow bounce back. There are even some markets where existing home sales are picking up as well, which benefits agents, appraisers, attorneys, and mortgage lenders.

CBS News also notes that the biggest indication that the housing market might begin to normalize is that the number of homeowners who are seriously delinquent in their loan payments is shrinking.

Does this mean the market will magically shift to normal in 2012? No, but hope remains that it will be a better year overall for real estate.

What do you think? Which news source resonates best with your own personal and professional outlook of 2012?

Realtors and builders are taking notice of this trend. In new home construction, builders are putting in extras such as security features, gourmet kitchens and yards with little to no maintenance required.

What else is important to this demographic?

Safety. Industry experts also say a building’s proximity to public transit and parking factor into this equation. Late working professional women would take notice of a parking garage and controlled building entrance.

Socializing opportunities and luxury touches. Events, areas for entertaining, spa, massage room and fitness centers with all the bells and whistles are a huge draw for the savvy woman buyer.

Respect. There’s unfortunately still a perception that single women are gullible—that they can be suckered by a wily contractor. In today’s market, that’s an unfair characterization: they’re smart. They’ve done their research. They probably know more about a building’s floorplans than the salesperson.

When women buy for themselves, they are excited about turning the home into something that reflects them and who they are—this is a continuing trend that should not be ignored by builders and developers.

Gen Y is not as interested in garden-style apartments. So will high rises gain popularity? Or will they be looking for a new product not yet designed?

We know they will expect wi-fi, iPod docking stations and apartments that truly reflect who they are.

The high foreclosure rate is not the only factor in the accelerated transition toward leasing. Today’s housing demand has actually shifted toward smaller dwellings; with Boomers downsizing to urban centers offering more amenities and the Millennials just hitting their single, urban life stage. Generation X is one of the smaller demographic groups right now, translating to a much weaker demand for traditional neighborhoods with single-family homes.

As the economy is now starting to lift, those who took on roommates or moved back with their parents are just starting to emerge into the real world again. Often the majority of these groups start with a lease.

Apartment developers are already responding to the growing demand for rental housing, but with so many construction firms out of business or in slow recovery there may soon be a rental shortage in many metropolitan areas.