Brint Wahlberg

Yesterday I took some notes from an economics professor at the UM. He had some info on how this stimulus affects Montana. Here's what I wrote down:

- $626 million for the State of Montana, in his opinion a little low per capita.

- 1/3 of that is for highway funding, he reminded us that many city streets are considered highways, such as Brooks, Russell, and Reserve here in town. He suggested that most likely this stimulus will allow projects such as the Russell St expansion to take place.

- In his opinion a lot of the stimulus money is going to go into programs that the State of Montana was most likely going to do. Which means that Montana will have hundreds of millions of extra money with this bill.

- In regards to Montana's economy as a whole, "one of the better in the nation." The reason why is that our economy isn't based on most of the volitile businesses at this point. Montana didn't see the big gains, and we're not seeing the big drops.

- Montana governor Brian Schweitzer has stated that Montana has a $250 million "rainy day" fund in the bank, just in case. When you compare this to California who is $40 billion in debt, or Kansas who is going to be bouncing checks to it's teachers, Montana is in a very good (and safe) position.

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This information came to me via the National Association of Realtors:

This is the official release from the National Association of Realtors:

So here's what we have achieved: 1) the loan limits will be raised to $727,000 in high cost areas, 2) the tax credit will be raised to $8,000 with NO payback [a true credit], 3) interest rates have come down 125-150 basis points, and 4) the bill has over $50 billion in it for foreclosure mitigation, with Geitners Treasury plan signaling that the second half of TARP and TALF will be used to mitigate foreclosures through a government guarantee, drive down interest rates by buying another $200-300 billion of mortgage paper from the GSES's thereby freeing them up to do the same with new mortgages, and Fannie has just agreed to lift the cap of 4 investment properties eligible for loans and raise it to 10.

In addition, we preserved what we have - which some tend to forget is always on the table when these negotiations start up again - mortgage interest deductability, real estate tax deductability, and the $250,000/$500,000 cap gains exclusion (an overall package worth more than $100 billion and for some a very attractive funding source for their pet projects).

We did make a run at the $15,000 credit - and we would have loved to have gotten that or the Homebuilders $22,000 credit idea as well as their 5 year loss carryback deal, but they were considered too rich for this program. What it did do though is totally take the debate off of whether a tax credit should be reinstated at all (it expired last year) and whether it was a true credit or a repayable loan, and kept the conversation on how much it should be. It also kept the debate off of ‘what we are willing to give up to get a $15,000 tax credit' and kept the debate again, on how much it should be. It's pretty hard to complain when they give you what you ask for and you lose something you never had.
While we study the Treasury specifics on their major role in providing the rest of the housing solution - there is much more to come and we are working diligently with the Administration to help ‘unclog the pipeline' and get capital flowing into housing again.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/map.economy/index.html

Some interesting stuff here:

- Regarding unemployment, Montana appears to be pretty good, almost 2% below the national average

- Jobs by industry, Montana is one of the many Rocky Mountian states that is showing healthy growth

- The lowest foreclosure rate in December of 0.009%

Social networking is not just the future, it's right now. And there's a ton of agents who are jumping on sites like ActiveRain here or Facebook and countless others. However I'll warn a lot of you, if you take a straight-laced and professional approach to it, you'll be making a big mistake, here's what I mean:

Be yourself, share your opinions, put up photos of your family, or pets, or travels. Tell lame jokes from time to time, rant about something that annoys you that isn't industry specific. Basically, be human. The modern consumer wants an experience, and they want to know you better than just a person who emails them with listings and shows them around town.

People want to know about you, and sites like Facebook and others allow you to do so. I've seen a lot of agents get a Facebook page and then just post listings, no personal information, and their page is very basic with canned information. If a consumer opens up your social networking page and all it talks about is the type of service you'll provide them and it says nothing else, then you're wasting your time with the site, because most people will skip over you.

Use these to connect with your friends, fellow professionals, and past clients as well. I'm in the Buffini system for those of you who know what that is, it means I'm contacting people I've worked with on a monthly basis. Social networking sites allow me to keep in touch, and stay updated on my former clients, my friends, and my associates in a much easier format than note cards, phone calls, and "pop-bys."

Now I can fall victim to this as well, in fact I've got to get rid of the business card photo on my Active Rain account, however for those of you venturing into what is referred to as "web 2.0" you need to show consumers a personal side of you, I cannot stress that enough.

I've seen the light, and it's Google Calendars.

No, I'm not a Google rep, I'm just really happy with my experience that I've had with Google Calendars, because of my sales team and my association, and I thought I'd share it quickly with you guys. It's a great tool to use if you're looking to improve communication on scheduling with your associates, I can't say enough about it.

I'm in a mother-son sales team, I'm the tech-dork, Mom is the old school broker. We're a great team b/c I bring a lot of new styles of communication and tech ideas to the table, while Mom has a giant database of former clients, is very well respected in the community, and probably knows more about real estate in Missoula than most agents practicing today. In almost 9 years working together we've had 1 big problem, scheduling errors and communication.

Mom uses a bound day-planner and her Buffini-systems weekly organizer, I use my Blackberry. Needless to say, they don't communicate well. I'd be constantly booking appointments on my phone, and Mom would be writing others down and the next thing we'd know, we'd have all sorts of schedule errors. I'd tried getting her synced into my Outlook calendar, and tried sending her my Blackberry calendar, but we continually had issues with it. Then by chance I stumbled across Google Calendar, and it's been great for us, here's why:

- You can set multiple people's schedules to overlap with yours, so in my case I can see Mom's calendar up against mine. I can also change my preferences to allow her to adjust or set appointments for me, for example if we have a new client meeting, she can add it into my calendar as well. I give her appointments a different color code than mine, so her appointments show up on my day in red, and mine in blue.

- You can allow others to simply view your calendar as well. I'm the president-elect of our local association and I've just invited our association staff to be viewable on my calendar. So now when we have new meetings or events the staff can check my calendar to see my schedule.

- You get a daily email at 5AM with your schedule. In my case, with Mom's schedule on there as well I get an email with her activities as well. So when I start the day I can see what both of us have going on.

- It's free, easy to access, and very user-friendly. You can add as many other people's schedules as you want, so it's great for large teams, and people with multiple association schedules.

If you're having issues with communications, I would strongly recommend you look into Google Calendars, it's been an incredible time saver for the both of us and it's really helped each of us get a grasp on our schedules.

Gang,

I've been here for a few days, I feel like we're all friends here, so I've got some simple advice. Stop complaining to the consumer about your expenses, please.

On the front page of activerain today: http://activerain.com/blogsview/873117/Expenses-of-a-Real-Estate-Agent

A very well written article, and spot-on expenses are tough in this business. However I felt like I needed to respond to this, because Realtors complaining about their expenses to the consumer drives me insane. Here's my response that so far appears to be getting ignored:

"While it is a good and in-depth list, put yourself in the consumers shoes. What would the common consumer today say about this? I could guess... a big "so what?" Consumers today want to know about the service you'll give them not about the bills you have to pay as a professional. We don't hear about any other salespeople of other professions complaining to us about their operating expenses, and if we did, we probably wouldn't care.

Does having or paying these expenses guarantee over the top service, or will it make you adhere to a standard of practice that other Realtors will not? Will it make your systems so air-tight that you're replying to any phone/web inquiry within 20 minutes regardless if you're in a meeting, with clients, or just at home on the weekend? You could argue yes to many, however consumers care about service, not the bills we pay."

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It's the truth people, consumers care about the experience they go through, the knowledge of the agent, and the service they receive. I know our expense of doing business is nuts, believe me, however the fact of the matter is nobody cares, at least nobody who you'll make money from. I firmly believe this is one reason why independent web sites are flourishing in real estate and why Realtor image continues to stay low. We're busy trying to justify the money we're spending to our consumers while the truth is they don't really care.

Think about how cars are marketed and sold. Do we hear about the cost of each part in the car? Do we hear about the salesperson's monthly costs of doing business? Nope, we hear about quality, experience, lifestyle, etc. Focus on service and a high standard of practice and you'll go much further in this business than the agent who is continually talking about their cost of doing business.