There were 56% more real estate showings in March 2012 compared to March 2011. It may be likely to see an increase in home sales within the upcoming months of 2012 when compared to home sales in 2011.

Although the first three months of 2012, showings were on a steady increase, real estate showings saw an 8% drop in April. But when compared to April of last year, showings in April are still up by 34%. April home sales data in San Diego is not yet available through Zillow, but our CBSA data shows a slight slowdown in San Diego home sales, but still an improvement over last year’s numbers.

In down real estate markets, many home sellers will do anything it takes to tempt prospective home buyers to make a purchase, especially by offering incentives to make the home seem a little more appealing. More common incentives include closing cost credits, HOA credits, or new home appliances. But will offering crazy buyers incentive really sell a house faster? Take a look at these unconventional incentives offered by home sellers in order to give buyers that extra push to and to get their home sold:

• Booze. Desperate to stand out from the competition, one home seller offered an incentive of $1000 worth of food and drinks at the bar across the street from the home.

• Cookies. Reportedly, actor George Hamilton negotiated one years worth of cookies into the sale of his home from a bakery owner.

• Cars. Malibu home owners threw in a Ferrari with the sale of their condo. If you happen to have a Ferrari that you wouldn’t mind parting with, this incentive will almost definitely sell a house faster.

• Vacations. It’s actually quite common for home sellers to offer vacations as an incentive to buyers. After all, who wouldn’t want a relaxing getaway after the stresses of moving and relocating?

• Other Homes. Homeowners in Connecticut decided to include their vacation condo in Florida as part of their home buyer incentive.

• Electronics. How would a brand new 52” LCD TV look in your new oversized living room? Or did you hear about that new iPad app with an integrated garage door opener? High-end electronics are often used in attempt to highlight existing features of a home.

At the least, offering an incentive to buy your home may spark some interest amongst prospective buyers and could potentially help sell a house faster. Do you think that offering crazy buyers incentives is a good idea, or is it a better idea to stay away from the “gimmicks” and stick to what is proven to boost the actual value of the home?

As the cost of renting continues to rise and home values keep dropping, buying a home is beginning to make more financial sense than renting. According to real estate data provided by Trulia’s rent vs. buy index, buying is more affordable than renting in 98 out of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. The index is based on asking prices for rental units and homes for sale on the company’s website between Dec. 1, 2011, and Feb. 29.

“As rents rise and prices stagnate, homeownership is becoming even more affordable, but rising rents create a dilemma for people who can’t afford to buy yet,” says Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. “Rising rents make it harder for people to save for a down payment, which is the biggest barrier to buying a home that aspiring homeowners face.”

Although buying makes more economic sense, many people are struggling to pay their rent, let alone save for a down payment. In this case, many are still choosing, or being forced, to rent. But as the demand for rental properties increases, so do the prices.

The only metro areas that renting is often a better deal than buying are the Honolulu and San Francisco areas. However, Trulia’s real estate data points out that buying a home in these markets might make sense for people who plan to stay in their next home for at least five years and can benefit from the mortgage-interest tax deduction.

“Metros where homeownership is expensive tend to have stronger long-term economic growth and little room to build new homes, like Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area, where people expect home prices to increase over time,” Kolko says.

According to real estate data provided by CNN Money, there are some areas where buying is drastically cheaper than renting a home, such as Detroit, Michigan, Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. But the areas with extreme price differences tend to be older and run-down. Although, there could be a reason why buying can be dramatically less expensive in these areas:

“Buying is much cheaper than renting in slow-growing places with high vacancy rates and land to spare like Detroit and Cleveland, where prices are unlikely to improve much in the future,” said Trulia’s chief economist Jed Kolko.

What other factors could potentially be influencing the price of rental properties?

Although home showings in April have decreased on a month to month basis, when compared to the month of April in 2010 and 2011, real estate showings in April 2012 are still on the rise, at a 3% increase over April 2011. This could still mean good news for the rest of 2012, since home buyer foot traffic has still increased overall for 2012.

According to Seth Siegler, Showing Suite’s Chief Technology Officer, real estate showings have a visible connection with the proceeding market. “Nobody has a crystal ball that can tell them what the real estate market is going to do, but accurate showings data is as close as you can get.  Increased showings almost always precede increased sales and we’ve been seeing in our data for metro markets time after time.  A steady national rise, year over year is a great sign of things to come for the US real estate market.” said Siegler.

According to Showing Suite’s CBSA reports, real estate showings in Phoenix spiked from an average of 5.86 showings per listing in December 2011, to a whopping 7.34 in January 2012 and continued to rise in February and March. Coincidentally, home sales didn’t start to pick up until February. According to Zillow, 3123 homes were sold in February 2012, and 3816 homes were sold in March 2012. What this means is that buyers who attended a showing, and were on the market to purchase a home in January, most likely closed on a home in February or March.

When a home has more real estate showings, essentially, it could make it more likely to sell quicker, and at a higher price. More home showings means more competition for the home buyers, giving the home seller the upper hand, especially when it comes to pricing. If the real estate showings continue to rise throughout April, it is possible that home sales in Phoenix will also continue to increase.

According to a new property feedback report from S&P/Case-Shiller, home prices in February 2012 have hit new post-bubble lows, and have not been this low since November 2002. The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 cities recorded an overall decline of 3.5% from 12 months earlier.

“Nine [housing markets] hit post-bubble lows,” said David Blitzer, spokesman for S&P. The nine cities are Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Las Vegas, New York, Portland, Seattle and Tampa. Atlanta’s housing market is one of the hardest hit cities, with home prices being 17.3% lower than last year. This is the lowest home prices have been in Atlanta in the last 16 years.

According to Pat Newport, an analyst for IHS Global Insight, property feedback shows that one of the biggest factors causing low prices for a lot of cities, especially Atlanta, continues to be foreclosures and other distressed property sales.

“Atlanta is still clearing out a lot of foreclosure and short-sale inventory,” said Bill Boatman, president of Georgia Association of Realtors. “The price drop there is a reflection of those distressed property sales, not the normal market.”

This does not mean prices in all cities are dropping. According to the property feedback reports, Phoenix home prices climbed a whopping 3.3% compared to last year. Miami recorded a gain of 0.8%, and San Diego recorded a positive return of 0.2%.

What factors, besides a high inventory of foreclosures and distressed properties, do you think could potentially be hurting home sales prices in those nine neighborhoods?

When you first hear anything about “hemp”, most people immediately think of marijuana. But in most of the world, hemp is thought of as a useful, sustainable building material. The leafy part of the plant is marijuana, but the rest is hemp, which is a fibrous and strong plant that is used to make anything from paper, clothing, and recently more widely being used as a product for real estate construction. It grows naturally and is probably the most versatile plant in the world, being able to grow virtually anywhere without the use of herbicides or insecticides and with that, it can produce up to 4 tons of hemp each year on one acre.

Hemp is a very versatile product for real estate construction that can be manufactured into a variety of products that resemble wood including fiberboard, wallboard, roofing tiles, insulation, paneling and bricks. Home foundations can even be made out of compressed hurds. To create insulation, you fill a hemp plywood frame with a mixture of hemp hurds, lime, and water. This building material has been coined “hempcrete”.

Houses that are built using hempcrete are found to use less energy, create less waste, and take less fuel to heat than conventionally constructed homes. Not only is hemp energy-efficient, but due to it being extremely lightweight and superior in strength, it is also cited as being an ideal building material in earthquake prone zones. It keeps getting better. Besides all of this, hempcrete is resistant to rot and to pests such as rodents and insects, fireproof, waterproof, weather resistant and self-insulating.

Building homes out of hemp may cost more upfront than traditional materials, but ultimately, you will end up saving thousands of dollars down the road on energy, damage, and insurance expenses. Although still considered controversial in the United States, there is hope of making hemp a more affordable product for real estate construction and more widely used. Do you think hemp will be the future of home building in the United States?

Gas prices around the country have been on the rise, and the probability of $5.00 per gallon is a scary, but very real possibility. Regardless of what seems to be record high gas prices, how is it possible that people still sell more homes; close to a two year high nationwide to be exact. Compared to one year prior, pending home sales in February rose 14%. The home sale results so far for for January and February mark the best start to a year since 2007.

Although people are selling more homes so far in 2012, a whopping 64.5% of total home sales are purchases made by investors for the purpose of generating rental income. While we see increasing gas prices and a higher cost of living, almost 34% of occupied homes in the fourth quarter 2011 were rented, according to Census data. The increased cost of living is making homeownership seem less attainable, especially when it comes to trying to save up for a down payment. This is making it more likely that people would opt into renting versus buying.

Meanwhile, investors are taking advantage of the market and economic conditions, and are boosting rent costs and quickly filling up rental units. Economists predict that rent costs are expected to increase as more people opt into renting.

With gas prices steadily increasing throughout 2012, it’s inevitable that the cost of living for many nationwide will increase as well. If gas prices rise above $5.00 per gallon, how will this affect the average American when it comes to buying and selling more homes?

Real estate technology consulting firm, 1000Watt Consulting, recently released Nudge, which is a new web-based real estate productivity application designed to show off a real estate agent’s knowledge with widgets, and act as a “call to action” for prospective clients. Where you would normally show charts and graphs with various statistics of how the housing market is doing, Nudge offers a clean, simplified way of presenting data to your prospects. “Nudge was born from the notion that agents could use something to cut through the noise and connect with consumers viscerally, almost emotionally, in their marketing,” Said 1000Watt’s Marc Davidson. “We wanted to create something different, clear and beautiful.”

The real estate productivity widgets show various market indicators and trends, such as housing inventory, pricing, and time on market. What makes Nudge different, is that the widgets do not pull in market data from outside sources; instead the indicators are completely adjustable by the agent according to their personal opinion. “The data comes from your head and opinion. That’s what we believe is far more beautiful and worth sharing than a bunch of static facts,” Marc Davison told Inman News. “It’s your very opinion that makes you you, and what attracts people to you. Nudge helps you share that.”

As of right now, there are eight different indicators to choose from. Once chosen, users can either choose a predesigned template for the Nudge or choose their own colors. You can then create your call to action message up to 400 characters. Once you create your own Nudge page you can send it through email, and share it on your social networking sites.

How do you think this new real estate productivity app will help aid in converting prospects to clients? To learn more about Nudge, visit 100Watt Consulting’s blog.

Many agents consider themselves “real estate technology gurus”, but just because you have a website and a Facebook page does not necessarily mean you are utilizing them correctly. Nowadays, agents must learn how to take advantage of technology – everything from Internet marketing and savvy use of the MLS system, to making a home’s details and photos attractive, and accessible to potential buyers through mobile technologies. What ways can you avoid making real estate technology mistakes? Take a look at the most commonplace mistakes

1. QR Codes: This is one of the most widely misused real estate technology methods. One of the most common mistakes is when a QR code does not lead to a mobile friendly web page. This completely defeats the purpose, since QR codes are meant to be scanned with a mobile device. Also, we’ve witnessed agents sticking QR codes in places that aren’t exactly the most well thought out; like on a car for example (accident, anyone?!).
2. Blogging: Having a blog is a great start, but you need to be sure you are actually using it. If you don’t frequently post on your blog, it is actually hurting you more than not having a blog at all. Be sure your blog is properly optimized as well by targeting the right keywords in the body and title of each post, and include images in each post.
3. Social Media: Don’t forget that social media is about connecting with people, not pushing a product. Social media is not a contest about who has the most followers/likes, but rather to engage with your network of followers who are interested in your company.
4. Website Traffic: Forget the mindset that a website by itself will generate leads and traffic. Without proper SEO tactics, your real estate website will just get lost in the never ending sea of websites. To gain traffic, you need to create a strategy, and utilize organic search, keywords, and paid advertisements. It’s best to take some time to learn about SEO techniques, or hire an agency.
5. Listing Photos: Pictures are the first thing any home buyer is interested in seeing. Unless you also happen to be a professional level photographer, leave this up to the experts. The worst thing an agent can do is use their camera phone, or take grainy, unprofessional photos of a home.
6. Smartphone: As a real estate agent, you’re always on the go, which means you need quick access to emails, property listing photos and details. Without a smartphone, you are missing out on providing your clients with instant information, which could potentially hinder the sale.

Above all these mistakes, the absolute worst thing you could do is avoid technology all together. Don’t be overwhelmed! Real estate technology is always growing and changing, you will not know everything right off the bat! But you simply can not solely rely on the old-school marketing techniques from the 1980’s. By avoiding all of these technologies, to put it bluntly; you are killing your business. There are plenty of free and easy to use resources and real estate tools online to help you get started and improve your business!