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About How The SMART Office Network Can Effectively Meet Your Real Estate Needs

About Us

Metro Brokers Smart Office Network

S.M.A.R.T. - Systems, Marketing, Administration, Real Estate, Technologies

The knowledge, technology and team to keep your transaction in balance...

Full Spectrum Marketing, transaction management, title insurance, mortgage, and escrow, brokers, processors all working together in one location using a singular electronic platform for your convenience. All your real estate needs covered with "ONE STOP."It's SMART because we have the systems, marketing, administration and technology to take quality care of all your real estate needs.

 

What is the basis of the S.M.A.R.T. Office Network?

The Real Estate Professionals of the Future
Since the turn of the century, the real estate sales agent has been at core of the business and most REALTORS® are utilizing the same old-fashioned marketing and sales techniques. Now consumers know they can obtain information from the Internet, and they want to work exclusively with agents who can conduct business online and will respond quickly.

Will this eliminate the real estate professional? Even though most consumers are looking for detailed property listings - not agents or companies - research shows that 19 percent of all online searches result in a face-to-face meeting with a REALTOR®. Statistics from the National Association of Realtors show that 87 percent of Internet shoppers are more likely to use a real estate professional compared to 76 percent of offline buyers.

Despite all the changes expected in the residential real estate industry over the next few years, it will unquestionably remain a people business with largely the same players as today: consumers, agents and organizations. What will change, and dramatically so, is the interaction of those players, the goods and services exchanged, and how everyone is compensated. For those individuals and organizations that can adjust to this new "realty-reality," opportunities will abound.

In a climate teaming with change and opportunity, brokers and agents are increasingly turning toward technology and the Internet for business solutions. Properly applied, technology will allow real estate professionals to excel at managing every aspect of their customer relationships - from finding new customers to adding value to their current relationships.

Broker owners must attract, support and retain quality agents in order to remain viable. The centerpiece of any real estate company's successful Internet transformation is the establishment of an "Elite Core Group" of agents who are excited, willing and able to learn and use the Web for their business. With proper management support and leadership, they become the fertile soil from which a company will grow its transition to full Internet integration from the inside out. Technology-driven companies will be more attractive to the young lions and new career professionals entering the business.

Real estate agents are adopting technology at a significant rate. Technology in the form of individual productivity tools such as smart phones,voice mail, social media, e-mail, laptop and notebook computers, personal web sites, blogs and technology marketing programs have been embraced by the real estate industry. However, these tools and services are fragmented, creating islands of information with no real continuity. The industry is ready for technology applied to the business process versus individual components of the process.

Top producers realize a client is a "cost" until a property is sold. Every hour spent with a client who doesn't close means less income to the agent. The Internet provides a significant advantage for finding the true prospects among the suspects and then delivering the services necessary to move the buying/selling process to closure.

Building an agent's on-line business doesn't begin and end with a simple web page. For the professional agent, e-mail has become the primary communications tool between industry professionals, consumers and real estate trading partners. Combining an agent's communication tools (email, phone,test, fax, pager, etc.) through a virtual workplace that maps specific communication tasks and provides an electronic communication assistant to coordinate the communication flow is the future. More importantly, linking all of these services to the agent's customer database provides a single system to mange customer relationships and create customers for life. A true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system builds permanent asset value into the agent's practice. The end result is a professional practice that can be sold, very similar to other professions such as attorneys, dentists, doctors, etc.

Excerpted from an InteliTouch white paper by Steve Deckrow, President of InteliTouch.com


http://www.realtyoasis.com/about-smart-officee-network-systems-marketing-administration-real-estate-technology
 




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Investor sales increase while owner-occupant sales drop

For Rent
Creative Commons License photo credit: dougww

 

According to an April 2011 National Association of REALTORS study, investor sales rose 65 percent this year. Meanwhile, owner-occupied purchases have dropped by 15.5 percent. Simply put -- "without investors, the housing market would not have improved last year." This is said to be good news, not cause for concern. Real Estate experts argue that investors act first with home buyers to soon follow. In addition, we must remember that with all of the homeowners that have had to turn to short sales to get out of their underwater home loans, we need more rental inventory as those borrowers turn into tenants themselves. The study suggests that the majority of current investors are not buying to fix-and-flip, but to rent out these properties instead.


Read the complete article.


http://www.realtyoasis.com/investor-sales-increase-while-owner-occupant-sales-drop
 




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Survey reveals best and worst states for business

South Shore Chamber of Commerce
Creative Commons License photo credit: Office of Governor Patrick

 

The magazine Chief Executive has just published its eighth-annual survey of the best and worst states in which to do business. This year, 650 CEOs responded to the survey, up from 550 CEOs last year. The "CEOs were asked to grade states in which they do business among a variety of areas, including tax and regulation, quality of workforce and living enviornment."

2011-winner-Texas came in first again this year. Florida and North Carolina -- third and second last year, respectively -- swapped spots this year.

Colorado, which came in 12th in 2011, moved up one notch to 11th place this year.

The article speculates that most of the states that made the top-20 also happen to be right-to-work states, Colorado included. Ohio University economist Richard Vedder and Harvard economist Robert Barro both argue that economies in right-to-work states grow more quickly than in non-right-to-work states, have higher employment rates, and attract more inward migration -- the migration of people from rural areas into urban areas.

 

Read the full article.

 

 


http://www.realtyoasis.com/survey-reveals-best-and-worst-states-for-business
 




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Housing crisis to end soon now that banks are easing up on credit requirements

Houses on pound coins
Creative Commons License photo credit: Images_of_Money

 

Experts predict that the housing crisis will come to an end this year due mostly to lenders loosening credit requirements. The average score required in order to procure a new mortgage loan is 700, which falls right in-line with what requirements were last year at this time. Lenders are also lending higher amounts, which may also be a factor helping to end the housing crisis. Now, it's possible to borrow up to 3.5 times your income. When the crisis was at its peak, one could only borrow up to 3.2 times a borrower's income.

Banks area also seeming to lower the loan-to-value ratio (commonly referred to as LTV). Capital Economics says that this factor alone is, "the clearest sign yet of an improvement in mortgage credit conditions." In mid-2010, the LTV was only at 74 percent; now it's at 82 percent.

While some credit factors have been eased a bit, there are still many potential borrowers who can't meet the current credit requirements. Captial Economics reports that in November 2011, still eight percent "of contract cancellations were the result of a potential buyer not qualifying for a loan."


Read more here.


http://www.realtyoasis.com/housing-crisis-to-end-soon-now-that-banks-are-easing-up-on-credit-requirements
 




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14-year-old girl purchases her first distressed home!

Distressed House
Creative Commons License photo credit: kendoman26

 

14-year-old Willow Tufano is quite the entrepreneur already, despite her young age. The Florida teen recently purchased her first home down in the panhandle state. She earned six-thousand-dollars from selling items on craigslist, and since Florida requires homeowners to be at least 18 years old, she instead used that money to go half on buying a short sale home with her mother. The young Tufano sold furniture and other abandoned items on craigslist and quickly turned a profit. This is not your average teenage girl, folks -- she didn't want a new Xbox or even a car -- no, she wanted real estate.

"If there's one thing I want people to know, it's that your age does not matter. If I can inspire another person my age, younger, that would mean the world. Whether it's buying a house, buying a car, or whatever. If you really work for it and put your mind to it you can do what you want to do," she told ABC News.

Her mother, Shannon Moore, is a Realtor who already co-owns many rentals with her husband. When Tufano learned that her mother was planning to buy the distressed property, she asked her mother if she could go in on the purchase with her. Tufano helped fix up the home and prepare it for being rented out. She will evenly split the rental proceeds with her mother and eventually -- when she reaches the legal age of 18 -- will use that money to buy out her mom so that she alone will hold the title herself.

Tufano was asked if she would follow in mom's footsteps and become a Realtor, to which she replied, "I'm not so sure about real estate, but investing is really cool. You get to see a property that was a mess before and afterward see that it's beautiful. I suppose with real estate you can connect with people more, but I would probably prefer investing."

 

Read the full article.

 


http://www.realtyoasis.com/14-year-old-girl-purchases-her-first-distressed-home