If you are on the brink of despair and are thinking about giving up your real estate license don’t do it; at least not yet. You worked too hard to get licensed and with the right tools you might be able to turn things around and have the success you dreamed about before you got licensed!

So, instead of doing the same old things for the same unsuccessful results, do something different. For starters, start with a good real estate marketing tool.

Proven Marketing Ideas.

Why reinvent the wheel when there are some pretty good marketing tools already available, and at bargain basement prices considering the money you can make using them? For example, a farming expired listing script is one of the best tools that an agent can have in their marketing tool kit! And they don’t all cost a lot of money!

The right marketing tool can serve as a template for generating targeted, focused leads… one after another. The tool leads to listings, which then become sales. And once you perfect the template you can repeat the process over and over to create a profit generating machine, and almost effortlessly.

Here’s why it’s so important to have a good real estate marketing tool. The right tool can help you generate leads sales and listings. The more listings you have the more sales you’ll make.

And the more sales you make, the more referrals you can get to secure more listings. One feeds the other and in the process generates income. And isn’t that the reason you’re licensed to sell real estate – to make money?

Expensive Does Not Mean Effective

Effective marketing is easier than most real estate agents make it out to be. Some make it complicated and will buy overpriced marketing tools and associate quality with cost. However, I’m sure you know, even if it’s subconsciously, that just because something costs a lot of money doesn’t mean it’s worth the money you spent for it.

For example, have you ever gone to a clothing store to buy a suit and decided not to because you felt it was overpriced, only to see the same suit in the same store offered a week later for half price?

Well, the same thing applies to effective real estate marketing tools. Expensive does not necessarily mean good and effective!

The Lazy Agents Way To Unprecedented Success

When I was actively selling real estate I fully embraced any tool, or strategy that I could comprehend that would make me more successful. In that respect I figured out a way to market to 10-20 prospects a day in an hour or so, and did it 5 days a week. In a years time I prospected to more sellers than most agents did in a life time.

Although I thought of it as a lazy way to get business I wasn’t lazy, but very focused, determined and driven to do it in the least possible amount of time.

I realized early on that looking and being busy was not the same as being focused and productive. And with my particular real estate marketing tool, which was an expired listing system, I took my business to the next level and averaged more listings in a month than many of my peers did in a year.

You too can take your business to the next level, but only if you have the right tools for the job. Want listings? Learn how to get them with a listing system! Want to close on more leads. Brush up on your closing skills with a tool that helps you improve that particular skill.

In the end it will be the simple things that make the difference.

The real estate market in 2012 is finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We are going to see a shift and settlement in several depressed areas. New ideas and concepts are emerging, while other ones are being reinforced and perfected.

According to the National Association of Realtors the inventory of residential real estate is down more than 20% from a year ago and median list prices are up an average of 4% nationwide. Most individual markets have reported an increase in prices and very few have seen a decline. This is a sign that there is stabilization and recovery in process. There is a good reason to believe that prices will start to increase slightly across the board by the end of 2012.

Appreciation is still a distant concept – being a buyers’ market and the mentality that everyone wants to submit a lowball offer on an already low price is going to slow down a value recovery.

Mortgage interest rates will remain at historic lows, however home ownership rates continue to fall, due to lack of jobs stability and mortgage qualifying guidelines.

This is leaving the door open to many foreign investments. USA is seen as #1 for real estate investments worldwide, both residential and commercial.

Distressed properties actually represent the majority of housing inventory – this still includes a strong trend with short sales (lenders are improving and streamlining their short sale process, mainly due to strong government involvement) and foreclosures (REO properties – shadow inventory – are going to be released in the market more than in 2011.) Just Bank of America has claimed a 60% increase in short sales in 2011 over the previous year and they expect 2012 to be at the same level or more.

Several lenders have started offering lease option sales. Homes that have been foreclosed are leased back to the homeowner through a lease option program and eventually are allowed to purchase the house back. This trend is going to become more popular in 2012, with so many REO properties sitting in “shadow inventory.”

Bulk REO Trading will be on the rise. With so many homes foreclosed, waiting to be released in the market (banks are controlling how many homes are released at one time, so not to flood the depressed market with distressed property prices and drive values down further,) banks are looking to sell these homes in packages to investors.

Home remodeling and improvements will be on the rise – owners prefer adding or remodeling their existing home instead of trading up or buying a new home. By now investors should be used to a different approach to investing: real estate has definitely evolved into a totally new way of doing business and the window of opportunity is still wide open. 2012 is reinforcing the new concepts and ideas that we have learned in the last few years: now it is a matter of thinking outside the box and capitalizing on the trends.