October 9th, 2009

Weekly Roundup

By Jackie Berg, Marketing Specialist

• The FTC steps in to regulate advertising rules for the first time since 1980 (via AdvertisingAge):

“The agency [...] voted 4 to 0 to update its rules governing endorsements, and the new guidelines require bloggers to clearly disclose any material connection to an advertiser, including payments for an endorsement or free product.”

• Our client Century 21 was honored with an OMMA Online Advertising Creativity Award (via RISMedia):

“The OMMA Award, which reviews submissions across all industries, honored Century 21 Real Estate for its search engine marketing work with MediaCom Search, a division of GroupM Search. Century 21 Real Estate was honored for having the best search marketing for paid search. Century 21 and MediaCom Search also received a Stevie Award this for this same campaign in July.”

• Clean Slate blog digs into the generation gaps between real estate professionals and their business practices:

“As we look toward the future of our industry and the future professionals, we see promising, young and perhaps, virtual agents using the latest and greatest advanced methods of communications for inquiry generation and production (e.g. video, blogs, social networks, etc.). Yet, when we examine our current agent population, we have a majority of veteran professionals with ten or more years of tenure, production, and relationships that were built on handshakes, face to face conversations, and handwritten notes.”

• The Facebook data team analyzes how happy people are based on their status updates:

“Every day, through Facebook status updates, people share how they feel with those who matter most in their lives. These updates are tiny windows into how people are doing. They’re brief, to the point, and descriptive of what’s going on this week, today or right now. Grouped together, these updates are indicative of how we are collectively feeling. At Facebook, we’re always looking for ways to help people better understand the world around them, and we’re interested in how people express their emotions with one other and the world. So earlier this year, data scientists at Facebook started a project to measure the overall mood of people from the United States on Facebook, based on the sentiment expressed in status updates.”

Tags: century 21, Facebook, FTC, OMMA, real estate agent news, real estate industry.

October 16th, 2008

As the World Turns…Why the Global Economy is More Like a Soap Opera Every Day

By John Paul Murphy, Content Services Manager

Over the course of the next few months, we will be fortunate enough to have Tara Powers blog for us while living in Spain. We are hoping that she can give us a different perspective on not only what is happening here in the United States, but impart some knowledge on what is happening globally…

- John Paul Murphy

If watching the 11:00 news wasn’t always an uplifting pastime in the U.S., doubtless it’s even more enjoyable now that we get to hear about how our country’s economy is crashing and burning every night as well. Maybe you’d think that being across the pond, nightly news would be a bit lighter — scenes from Oktoberfest, or at the very least the latest update on David Beckham.

Except, guess what? The proverbial housing bubble burst is here as well, has led to a strikingly similar, just less publicized, crisis of financial affairs.

So, what happened? At least in Spain — the country that I’m calling home — the sequence of events was entwined with those in the States. Going back to the introduction of the Euro in 2000, historically low interest rates gave rise to a booming real estate market. This boom was characterized by an explosion of construction and an unusually high demand for this excess of homes, many of which were financed with low-interest mortgages that allowed as much as 40 years for repayment. Spanish banks turned to international markets to finance their increasing demand, so much so that 25 percent of the Spanish real estate market was being financed by money coming from outside the country.

When the subprime mortgage crisis hit North America in August of 2007, confidence in the European real estate market plummeted as well. The Spanish markets had to rely on Central Bank of Europe to keep their finances from collapsing as debts grew. Banks stopped lending for mortgages and construction, paralyzing real estate growth, sales, and demand.

As of October 6, 2008 15 percent of the 25 million homes in Spain are vacant. The construction sector has lost over 22,000 workers since the start of 2008, and agriculture nearly 10,000. Small business owners are giving up their businesses at a staggering rate — almost 300 each day since May 2008, according to the National Federation of Autonomous Workers.

Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, and Ireland made moves in recent weeks to cover 100 percent of their investors, although the rest of Europe is seeking a more coordinated plan. A major summit of 20 countries was held on October 11 to formulate such a plan, and the following days saw countries pledge a combined 2.2 trillion Euros in their own forms of the U.S. bail-out plan. Britain alone pledged 37 billion pounds in new capital to its three largest banks, as well as 400 billion pounds in bail-out funding.

The 27 countries of the EU are currently involved in a European Council in Brussels to create a more detailed common plan. In addition to these efforts, the president of the EU plans to call another summit next month in order to reform the world financial order put in place at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, possibly including a revision of the way markets, banks, mortgage firms, hedge funds and private equity are supervised as well as higher guarantees for bank deposits.

So the moral of the story is, things are about as precarious over here as they are in the good ol’ U.S. of A. While the U.S/Euro exchange rate may still make buying any souvenirs for myself a bit of a pain, the economy here is just as tenuous. And just like in the States, it seems that only time will tell what’s in store for the global state of affairs.

Until next time…adios!

Tags: global market, Onboard Informatics, real estate industry, real estate market.