Luxury Real Estate

By Grant Hermes

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”
~ William Pollard

Nowadays, information spreads and multiplies exponentially throughout the Internet. Who has time to spend hours a day sifting and sorting through endless websites in search of useful and, more importantly, up-to-date news? I know I certainly do not. This is where RSS feeds are a lifesaver for me.

When you see the  icon all you have to do is click on it and add it as a bookmark or to a reader of your choice. Try it out by clicking on the “Articles” RSS feed on this blog page (just look for the  icon to find it). Now you have a current look at the most-recent posts to the LuxuryRealEstate.com Blog. I personally place all my feeds in my bookmarks toolbar so they’re right in front of me. Another useful RSS feed I use is from RISMedia.com (they have dozens of feeds but I use the Real Estate-specific feed as well as a few others – check them out).

I always saw links for RSS feeds before, but just never clicked on them until this past week. Let me tell you, it is the greatest addition to my Internet browser. In one click, I get a snapshot of a site’s blog posts or articles and, most importantly, if any new ones have been posted. I feel more informed than ever on world news by being able to quickly and effortlessly scan through headlines, and if I want more detailed information it’s just a click away.

Hopefully this will help you narrow down and sort through the overwhelming amount of information out there that’s important to you but which you just don’t have time to sort through.

If you need it…RSS picture is complements of http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102200751033.aspx


Editor’s Note:
Grant Hermes is the Staff Accountant for LuxuryRealEstate.com. He assists Controller James Hughes with all of the necessary paperwork and accounting to keep LuxuryRealEstate.com running smoothly. This is the first blog entry I’ve received from Grant, and it’s quite a smashing one. RSS feeds are quite helpful in our information-saturated environment, like the quote at the start of this blog entry notes. It doesn’t help to have a huge library if none of the books are correctly ordered or easily accessible to readers. Thank goodness for RSS feeds, which are kind of like a high-tech Dewey Decimal System. And thanks for the explanation, Grant!

By Brian Langhorst

Kaira Sturdivant Rouda, the Chief Operating Officer of Real Living Inc. in Columbus, Ohio and our select Board of Regents member for the entire state of Ohio, has been very busy lately. Several months ago Kaira wrote and published a great book, “Real You Incorporated.” This empowering book for women and all businesspeople recently broke into the top 25 books corporate America is reading!

Congratulations, Kaira!


Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is LuxuryRealEstate.com’s Membership Manager. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. In addition to being an accomplished business leader and author, Kaira Rouda is also a great public speaker, which she showed at the 6th Annual Luxury Real Estate Spring Retreat in San Diego last month. Her presentation was entitled “Real Marketing for Today’s Consumer.”

By Brian Langhorst

There are so many great websites offering solid advice and news that can help make you more productive and successful. www.RISMedia.com is a dynamic real estate news provider, which offers constant updates, advice and so much more. Be sure to add RISMedia to your bookmarks, and check it frequently. Today on their site, they offer advice on email auto responders, lead-management software, and ideas on how to improve client relationships.

Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is the Membership Manager for LuxuryRealEstate.com. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. The Internet is amazing! Information can break through barriers and find its way into the hands of a variety of people quickly and easily. Of course, there will always be a place for print materials, online news sources have plenty of unique strengths for all of us to use. By the way, if you’d like to improve your Web presence, the LuxuryRealEstate.com Web team is ready to help. They just completed a new website for Audrey Ross of Christie’s Great Estates.

By Robert Lockard

Similar to yesterday’s post, I would like to focus on some issues that I hope will show that current real-estate worries shouldn’t frighten buyers, sellers and agents too much. It seems like everything is going wrong right now because that is what we have been hearing over and over in the media. However, according to the RISMedia article entitled “Give Your Clients the Real Facts,” the National Association of REALTORS® is beginning a bold campaign to stem the tide of bad publicity with ads and a new Web site: www.housingmarketfacts.com. Basically, they stress the fact that real estate, and especially luxury real estate, has always been a good investment.

I definitely like this development because it’s good to alleviate some of the fears being spread in real-estate markets around the country. Other bloggers have pointed out to me that real estate is driven by emotions as well as numbers, so simply saying that everything is okay and that the numbers show growth isn’t enough to turn the tide against negativity. But it’s a good start. I hope that people will calm down soon and start focusing on solutions to the real and perceived problems plaguing many real-estate markets. I hope I can be more positive and share some solutions instead of just focusing on problems, as well!


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more.

By Robert Lockard

RISMedia’s article entitled “Where the Truth about Today’s Market Really Lies” continues to interest me. It begs the question: Are media sources being fair in their coverage of the current U.S. real-estate market or are they being overly negative? To answer this question, I suggest that there is a stigma against covering positive stories in the news. I hope that this will not offend members of the press, but I really do think that negativity is far too rampant in the news.

Feature stories, or “soft news,” as they’re often called in the industry, are often where you find positive stories on good people, places and trends. But the real “hard news” is where you find all of the problems in the world. When I was a reporter, I noticed that “hard news” stories were almost always more coveted and interesting to my fellow reporters than “soft news” stories. I think that is part of the reason why we don’t hear more stories about positive and unchanged real-estate markets, though sometimes we do find them buried in an article.

It is perfectly fair to raise concerns about current real-estate markets because this can lead to positive changes. I would simply like to suggest that reporters should not just “dig deeper” into stories, but also broaden their search to include a variety of voices, positive and negative, in stories. Burying quotes on positive aspects of the industry beneath negative statements doesn’t count. I can empathize with the difficulty in getting both sides of a story because of time restraints and other pressures. But simply focusing on the negative side, because that is more popular or interesting than covering the positive side, isn’t fair to readers, viewers or listeners. I hope to receive some interesting challenges and comments from this post. Hopefully, we can change the way luxury real estate and other markets are being portrayed in the media.


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more.

By Robert Lockard

Quick, guess which of these two stories you’re more likely to read in the news: A family that dutifully makes its mortgage payments each month or a family that misses several payments and is unable to keep its home. Let’s face it, conflict is inherently dramatic and interesting. It grabs our attention and inspires exciting emotions in us that we sometimes don’t experience in regular life. With this in mind, I’d like to talk a bit about an article in RISMedia, entitled “Where the Truth about Today’s Market Really Lies.” This article discusses the media’s current habit of reporting negative real-estate news while missing many positive stories.

Let’s remember not to blame reporters or make hasty complaints against them. I used to be a reporter, actually, so I can share some of what I learned about people in this profession with you. Reporters have a limited amount of time to research and write their stories, they usually contact previously established sources and they zealously guard their independence and neutrality on issues. Let’s be honest, though. Everyone has a bias and opinion on issues they’ve studied and many they know little about but pretend to be experts on.

I’m just getting warmed up on this issue. I’ll hopefully dig far deeper into this complex and extremely important topic soon. Here’s hoping for a strong luxury real estate market in 2008.


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more.