States Clamp Down on Sharks; Legitimate Investors May Feel Sting As the number of foreclosure filings climbs, increasing by 99.5 percent between the third quarter of 2006 and that of 2007, so does the number of laws designed to protect consumers from scams that pretend to help troubled home owners refinance.

Real estate practitioners need to adopt new strategies in the new year to give them a competitive edge, given that there are more than 2.5 million licensed real estate practitioners nationwide–all of them competing for work in a slow market.

WASHINGTON, January 14, 2008 – Beginning today, the National Association of Realtors® is reaching out to consumers with the facts about homeownership and the value of real estate as a long-term investment.

Over the next few months, existing-home sales are expected to hold fairly steady as indicated by pending sales activity, and then rise later in the year and continue to improve in 2009, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of REALTORS

WASHINGTON, December 19, 2007 – The fundamentals in commercial real estate remain healthy with only slight increases in vacancy rates expected for the office and industrial sectors during 2008, although credit restrictions have recently slowed overall investment activity, according to the latest COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE OUTLOOK of the National Association of Realtors

It’s a turbulent time for many real estate practitioners — but headlines about sluggish sales and tighter financing hardly capture the whole story. More than ever, you need to be up to speed on the wide-ranging phenomena driving today’s dodgy marketplace.

Many salespeople are overlooking fast-growing demographic groups containing large swaths of underserved consumers, says Frances Martinez Myers, senior vice president of business development at Prudential Fox & Roach.