After finishing my six-part series on the virtual real estate office, I received several letters, one of which I am quoting below:

In a previous post, I asked how much time is appropriate to be spending on social networking/social media over the course of a week. Based on feedback from other bloggers and my personal objectives for social media, I had concluded about 18-22 hours seemed about right. About 3-4 hours of a waking day. That includes blogging, Twittering, Linking In, Facebooking, group nurturing, all of it. That seemed okay for me. But still... my sample set could probably have been counted on, well, one hand.

Eighteen to twenty-two hours. Is that what everyone else is doing? Is that a lot? What's "a lot"?

Real estate in your market area is affected by influences outside of your own region.  For example, when I sold real estate in Portland, Oregon, what was happening in terms of inventory, appreciation, and activity in Seattle, Washington had an effect on my own marketplace. The two metropolitan areas are less than 200 miles apart, and one influences the other due to the easy and frequent population movement between the two cities.

I've been off the grid for a few days working on a project which is nearing completion.  It's not quite done, but I'm real close. 

Unfortunately, my social media activities kinda dropped off while I was off-grid  Is that a good thing?  I didn't think so.  But, some friends who are rooted in the tangible world say yes.  "You're getting a project done," "You're doing something real," they say.  "And, besides, you spend too much time as it is doing 'that stuff.'"  

That got me thinking.  How much time should it take?  What's the proper amount of time to invest in social media? 

This post is in response to a great post by Mary Supinger regarding short sales and credit ramifications.  I felt inclined to follow up with a post that may help agents and brokers reduce their risk in these types of transactions.  Many of my agents recently attended a risk management credit course on short sales, foreclosures and refinancing which has now scared them to death regarding the representation of a seller who is in a position for a possible short sale.  The issue isn’t the management of the sale, it is the possible future lawsuits they could face should the seller make an ill-informed decision and seek retaliation due to the agent’s neglect to

This is an updated version of a post that I sent out earlier in the year:

I have gotten the impression from many real estate agents that they are unaware of the effect of a Short Sale on their clients' credit report. The common belief is that a Short Sale isn't as bad as Foreclosure or Deed In Lieu of Foreclosure.

True Internet Success requires mastery of 4 areas…

I’ve spent over a decade in the Industry as a Realtor®, Broker and Builder.  I have since spent another decade developing unique internet technology tools for the industry and consulting for some of the largest brokers in the country.  I’ve had the chance to study and perfect the processes involved with generating actual dollars from websites.  Those systems helped me take one company from 20 leads/month to almost 1000 leads/month in one year. I have concluded that there are 4 key areas that need to be addressed to succeed.  I call them the 4 C’s.  You need to Call Out to prospects (Market), Capture them, Communicate with them and then Close them. 

You’ve got listings, yes you do…you’ve got listings, good for you!!!

Ummm…the market is overflowing with listings right now, and no matter how superior your listings are over anyone else’s listings, they don’t do you any good unless you get them out there! You have to get them out to the people that are buying in your area; you also want to get them out to potential sellers so that they can see how you would handle their listing if they were to sign with you.  You have a sphere of influence, you have a database…why aren’t you using it? 

 It's been fascinating to witness developments in the home staging industry over the past few years.  For my first few years as a staging instructor I had to define and explain staging.  Nowadays it is a phenomenon that has changed the way real estate is sold.  In 2004, I ‘Googled’ home staging, there were 16,768 entries.