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Median home prices fell in two-thirds of the cities surveyed during the first three months of this year while 46 states reported experienced declining sales, a real estate trade group reported Tuesday.

The National Association of Realtors said that median prices for existing single-family homes dropped in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas in the January-March period, while 48 metropolitan areas saw prices increase and one reported no change.

The price declines in 67 percent of the areas surveyed was the largest percentage of areas reporting declining prices in the history of the Realtors' survey, which goes back to 1979. Prices had fallen in 34 percent of the cities surveyed in the October-December survey. Read more

Out with the old, in with the new.

via

When I read about some real estate agent blogger touting their new lawn sign with the smiling dog logo, I thought good branding but big deal (unless they’re all over the neighborhood). More of the same old, same old. That’s no way to stand out from the crowd.

I say think outside the lawn sign box. How about going digital? Yeah, I know it’s more expensive but a digital poster/billboard/sign is probably reusable. So save it for that special multi-million dollar listing. And think of the marketing benefits. Chances are good you’ll get a spot on the local news or maybe a newspaper feature (after you contact them) and some word of mouth advertising working for you. You’ll probably get some decent blog coverage too. (Contact me and I’ll do a post on it.) For builders and developers marketing their latest and greatest properties, this seems like a no-brainer.

Remember, lawn signs are meant to attract the seller to list with you, potential buyers to stop in and the neighbors to gossip about it at the coffee shop. So take a chance with the lawn sign WOW factor ….or just stick with the bloodshot dog eyes on a wooded post.

Here is an example of where I think For Sale signs are headed:

How about a touch screen?

During the Blog Tour we saw a motion detection search screen behind the glass of a real estate office. Although the office was closed, folks were still able to search the properties.

Be different.

Related Posts:

Street Marketing 2.0: MJM and Senscell
Real Estate ATM: Using Kiosks to Sell Homes

Voice input search is coming to online search, and by extension, to real estate search.

Remember the Yellow Pages mantra, “Let your fingers do the walking” ? Well, consumers will let their voices do the walking with voice enabled search.  Rather than typing into the Google or Yahoo box, folks searching for a home, or anything else, will just ask what they’re looking for.

Google was recently granted a patent for its Google Voice Search.

This technology is working its way to you via mobile devices like your cellphone, iPhone and Blackberry.  What’s great is the mobile devices use GPS to give map based results .  So, imagine you can drive a neighborhood, speak a property search and get the results on a map, with links to the home listings.  (Heck, you can then drive by the house, point your iPhone at the bar coded For Sale sign to get more information on the home (and contact info) and then call the agent to see the home.)

The following applications accept voice input and return Web results:

Microsoft’s TellMe (video demo link)

Yahoo’s OneSearch (Press Release April 2008)

Sprint’s V-Enable (Press Release April 2008) (Check out the Mobile411 video here.)

By adopting this technology, a real estate website will set itself apart from the competition.   Imagine the clout of Realtor.com and the local MLS with this application for consumers?

See you in the future.

Related Post:

Human Search: Do You Cha Cha?

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