Cheap homes plus low mortgage rates have created record-high purchasing power for today’s active buyers.  In fact, the typical mortgage payment lower by 18% as compared to just 3 years ago.

This opportunity isn’t just for the “perfect” buyers with great credit and 20% down.

Buyers in precarious situations, which in years past would have confined them to renting, are benefitting from the re-introduction of popular products.

From the newly employed to those strapped for cash, here are 3 loan programs to share with buyers in high-profit niches to help them see that ownership is well within reach:

1. The Doctor’s Mortgage

Sometimes called the “Physician Mortgage” or the “Physician Loan”, the Doctor Mortgage is meant to help recent medical school graduates get access to mainstream mortgage financing, at today’s lowest rates.

The product serves a market in-need. Medical school graduates often leave school with large loads of student debt and very little reserves in order to make a home down payment. Furthermore, the income of a first-year medical resident is typically below the median household income in a given metropolitan area.

Residency income is temporary, however, and within five years, many physicians earn incomes that are among the highest in the nation, by profession. This is why the Doctor Loan was created. It waives specific loan standards, which may ordinarily cause of physician’s loan application to get turned down.

Doctor loans are available in several varieties, with most allowing:

(1) Debt-to-income (DTI) levels of up to 50%, with no inclusion of student debt;

(2) The ability to use future job income for qualification purposes; and

(3) Credit scores below national averages.

In addition, many Doctor Loan programs allow for 100% financing with no private mortgage insurance (PMI) requirement.

2. The Offer Letter Mortgage for clients moving on or up

The “Offer Letter” mortgage is another specialty loan program with multiple in-the-field aliases. Sometimes, it’s called the Relocation Mortgage. Other times, it’s called the New Job Mortgage. The premise, however, remains the same.

The Offer Letter Mortgage gives buyers the ability to get mortgage-approved while they’re in-between jobs. Buyers relocating in- or out-of-town; and recent college graduates soon to start work can use it.

The program is especially helpful for recent law school graduates and college professors taking jobs in new cities.

If you’re working with buyers in the relocation niche, there are a few important things you should let your buyers know.

Offer Letter Mortgages don’t provide for debt-to-income concessions, but do allow for buyers to use 100% of their expected salaried income as part of the mortgage approval process.

Lenders often require buyers to have a non-contingent job offer from their future employer, and to start their new job within 90 days of closing on the home. In addition, lenders will often want buyers to have sufficient reserves to cover whatever housing payments are due between closing and the first day of work.

The U.S. economy has added more than 5.7 million net new jobs since 2010. The Offer Letter Mortgage program is a great program to mention to buyers who are on the fence because of a pending job change.

3. Mortgages & down payment assistance programs for future repeat clients

Other loan options for today’s on the fence prospects include state- or local-government-sponsored mortgage and down payment assistance program. Not all governments provide access to such programs. Those that do, however, aim to promote local homeownership, providing cash incentives to homebuyers of homes.

In Connecticut, for example, military personnel, members of the police force, and teachers can apply for state-backed mortgages, which offer below-market mortgage rates. Similar programs are available in California, New York, and Illinois.

In other states, governments provide down payment loans and direct housing grants to homebuyers. These programs sometimes allow higher loans sizes in certain areas and aim to help homebuyers reduce their required monthly housing payment.

Qualification standards vary by location and participating governments often publish program standards on their respective websites. Your local lending professional is your best source for finding what’s out there and determining eligibility.

If you’d like to do your own research to use in prospecting, use your favorite search engine and enter “[Your State/Locality] Down Payment Assistance.” You’ll be surprised what you can find.

What high ROI niche do these programs help you cultivate?

The answer is simple: repeat clients. Today’s market opportunities are attracting many first-time buyers. Helping them into their starter home is a great way to earn their trust for future transactions in the years to come.

Today’s mortgage facts really say buy now.

“It’s a great time to buy a home”, so goes the maxim. Right now, it’s a lot more than a mantra. For 18 months mortgage rates have been in the 3s, fueling high home affordability. In addition, today’s homebuyers have these and a bevy of financing options to help them close on a home.

So are we in bubble territory? No. Bubble-phobes can rest easy. Even with recent sharp home price increases, prices are still low relative to fundamentals and are far below bubble levels.

Back to Basics: How to Spot a Bubble

To see a bubble, you first need to know what you’re looking for. A bubble in home prices (or in the price of any asset – like stocks or even tulips) is when prices soar above their fundamental value. Fundamental value is based on supply, demand, and realistic expectations about the future. We all learned in Economics 101 that prices move back toward an equilibrium determined by fundamentals of supply and demand. In a bubble, however, rising prices encourage speculation and fuel further demand – up until when the bubble suddenly bursts and people rush to sell, which causes prices to accelerate downward, sometimes well below their fundamental value. Bubbles are notoriously difficult to predict and hard to confirm until after they’ve burst: it’s impossible to be sure whether price gains are justified by fundamentals until, if and when, a bubble bursts. San Francisco home prices, for instance, are the highest in the country; is that “irrational exuberance” by speculative homebuyers, or are those prices justified by strong job growth, high incomes, great weather, and constraints on the local housing supply?

To answer that question, we assess whether home prices are overvalued or undervalued relative to their fundamental value by comparing prices today with historical prices, incomes, and rents. Incomes determine how much people can pay for housing, and price increases aren’t sustainable if they push prices too high relative to incomes. Rents reflect how much people value housing even if they won’t benefit from price appreciation (as renters don’t, but owners do); the price-to-rent ratio is like the price-earnings (P/E) ratio for stocks. Using data from multiple sources (see footnote), we create several measures of fundamental value and combine them in order to calculate how overvalued or undervalued home prices are relative to fundamentals.

Home Prices are Undervalued 7% Nationally and Regionally in 91 of the 100 Largest Metros

We estimate that national home prices are 7% undervalued in the second quarter of 2013 (2013 Q2). During last decade’s bubble, prices were as high as 39% overvalued in 2006 Q1, then during the bust, fell to 15% undervalued in 2011 Q4. Therefore, even with the recent price increases, home prices nationally remain undervalued relative to fundamentals and much lower than in the last bubble. That’s why today’s price gains are actually still a rebound, not a bubble. This chart shows how far prices are from bubble territory:

At the metro level, prices are below their fundamental value in 91 of the 100 largest metros. Prices are overvalued in the California metros of Orange County (+9%), Los Angeles (+5%), San Jose (+3%), and San Francisco (+2%), and the Texas metros of Austin (7%), San Antonio (5%), and Houston (2%), as well as in Portland (plus Honolulu, which at 0.01% is ever so slightly overvalued). The California metros are far less overvalued than at the height of the bubble – Orange County prices were 71% overvalued in 2006 Q1! Even the Texas metros, which largely avoided last decade’s housing bubble, are less overvalued today than at their peaks during the last bubble.

Prices are most undervalued today in Las Vegas and Detroit, even after their price gains in the past year. Several Florida and Ohio metros are also among the most undervalued. All of these metros were overvalued at the height of the bubble, some less so (Dayton, Akron) than others (Las Vegas, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville).

Other indicators aside from home prices, like mortgage lending and construction activity, confirm that the housing market isn’t forming a new bubble. Mortgage credit remains very tight, especially for people with lower credit scores, and the new “qualified mortgage” rules under Dodd-Frank intend to prevent the recurrence of toxic mortgages that artificially inflated housing demand in the last bubble. Also, construction activity, though rebounding, is still well below normal levels, and the vacancy rate is falling, so there’s no evidence of overbuilding today like we had during the last decade.

Is the Next Bubble Coming Soon?

If prices keep rising as fast as they are today, we’d be back in bubble territory in several years. However, prices are unlikely to keep rising as fast as they are today, for three reasons:

1. Inventory should expand. Tight inventory is boosting prices today as buyers bid up prices on scarce homes; however, as prices continue to rise, more people will sell as they get back above water or decide to cash out, and more new construction will add to inventory.
2. Mortgage rates should rise. Low mortgage rates today increase buying power because borrowers can afford a more expensive house for the same monthly payment. Rates are likely to rise as a result of the strengthening economy, either through market forces or Fed actions, which – along with more inventory – should slow down price gains.
3. Investor interest should fade. Undervalued prices have attracted investors, who have helped push up home prices as they have bought and rented out homes. But as prices rise, investor interest will fade.

Will expanding inventory, rising mortgage rates, and declining investor activity cause home prices to plunge? Slow down, yes, but probably not plunge. Just as these factors should cause home prices to slow down, job growth and increased household formation should support a continued recovery in housing demand.

Is Another Bubble Coming Ever?

Even though we’re not in bubble territory today, another one is coming – someday. The history of American real estate is full of speculation, bubbles, and busts. Trulia’s own survey of consumers shows that most people expect prices to get back to the peak of the previous bubble again in the next 10 years – including people in housing markets where prices had been overvalued most. Furthermore, our rent-versus-buy analysis, which indirectly reveals where people expect prices to rise the most long-term, shows that people expect future prices to rise more if they live in metros where booms and busts were more common in the past. This is another sign that people seem to think prices go up but not down. Will government help to prevent another bubble? Perhaps the new mortgage rules will help – but the more cynical answer is “no.” The most recent bubble was more severe than earlier housing bubbles, and if we didn’t previously learn from the past, then why should we learn from it now? In short: housing bubbles look almost inevitable. Whether you’re buying a home, selling a home, or setting housing policy, remember that the next housing bubble is probably just a matter of time. But, as Trulia’s Bubble Watch shows, that time is not now.

Notes: To get our estimate of over- or undervalued prices, we averaged together several measures of prices relative to fundamentals, including the price-to-income ratio, the price-to-rent ratio (national only), and the deviation of price growth from trend. We compared current values of these measures to the long-term average, excluding the most extreme quarters from the long-term average. We used the Trulia Price Monitor for current price trends as well as the Case-Shiller national index, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) national expanded-data index, the FHFA all-transactions price indexes for metros, national and metro per-capita income from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and national owner-equivalent rents from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our historical time series goes as far back as the early 1980s, depending on the data source. We tested our approach by seeing how well our over-/under-valuation measure would have predicted metro-level price drops in the housing crash. The correlation between metro-level price over- or-undervaluation in 2006 Q1 and the subsequent metro-level peak-to-trough price decline was -0.83.

Unfortunately, finding and showing luxury is a lot harder with some listings. Here are five ways to show off the luxury of your listings and put today’s serious house hunters in the high-end mindset:

1. Low cost, high impact staging

No ads, e-mails, or other marketing can help a home that doesn’t show well. To maximize your listing’s appeal to luxury-thirsty buyers, do a walkthrough with your seller clients to spot the small fixable culprits that are stealing your listing’s shine factor like

• Beat-up fixtures and accessories
• Distracting themed decor
• Overstressed storage

Conquering these staging problems is simpler than you think. For help solving these, and some of your larger staging issues, check out our helpful handout 10 Hardcore Staging Tips for Serious Sellers.

In addition, consider investing in second- or third-hand furnishings that will make your listing pop.

“In this era of Craigslist, eBay, Freecycle, estate sales and other peer-to-peer online stores and trading sites, there is an abundance of access to used furniture at great prices…” says real estate expert Tara Nicholle-Nelson.

2. Start your shooting with a photo plan

After you’ve tackled your staging issues, the next logical steps are to start photographing and showing the home.

Before you start snapping, come up with a photo agenda/plan that includes these five most-loved listing features:

• Gourmet Kitchens
• Front of House
• Master Bedroom
• Master Bathroom
• Living Room

Chances are, not every listing will have these exact features to show off, but playing up luxury finishes found in the smaller details is a great way to increase your listing’s appeal. For example: Your seller’s kitchen may not be “gourmet,” but focusing on small details, like quality appliances or granite countertops, go a long way toward creating a luxury feel.

3. Light it like a pro (or use one)

An April 2012 Florida Association of Realtors article, offered this helpful advice for do-it-yourself listing photographers, “Write down what stands out and what’s going to catch the eye. Then, start early to catch warm morning light and consider staying late to get shots at dusk.”

If you’re going to enlist the help of a professional photographer, be sure to look for one with a portfolio that includes great architectural shots. One great place to connect with local real estate savvy photographers is Houzz.com. Using Houzz, you can find not only professional photographers from your area, but also get ideas for luxury listing shots.

4. Include the luxury of the location

When your listing lacks the premium polish, be sure to sell and show off the luxury around it.

Marketing expert and author of the best-seller Likeonomics Rohit Bhargava wrote, “When you buy a luxury property, you are not just buying your own property but also entry into a particular neighborhood and even a way of life.”

You can sell the neighborhood in a number of ways, like

• Photos – Connect with the proprietors of the community’s most popular amenities. Ask them for permission to add a few of their photos to your listing pages on Trulia.
• Listing Descriptions – Don’t waste your listing description repeating what buyers and sellers can find elsewhere on your listing pages. Use this space to include mention of points of interest, neighborhood names, and local details that highlight the neighborhood’s values.

5. Get inspired – Check out our Luxe Blog

Lastly, but definitely not least, remember that luxury is a state of mind. Before you can show luxury, you should get to know luxury. One great way to do this is by visit Trulia’s Luxury Real Estate Blog to see how today’s top agents and clients are marketing their homes.

These are our 5 starter ways to add luxury to your listings. What would you add to the list?

Too many brokers and agents leave a lot to be desired when it comes to online reputation and are getting ignored by the tech savvy online consumers that could mean success. Why?

One of these top 5 online reputation don’ts is working against them:

Top 5 online marketing dont’s for today’s market recovery

1. I am number one – or any variation thereof: WHO CARES. It means nothing without context. Sure other agents may know, but are you number one in the county, the city, the state or number one in selling single family ranch homes over 200 acres?Until you give consumers context for your accomplishments, they mean nothing. Offer something concrete, something that will compel the consumer to think you are different. Everyone’s number one in something, change the tune!
2. Reelly bad speeling – Please have others read your ads, profiles, tag lines, etc. If you can’t write a simple tag line, how can you be expected to provide proper care and consideration when dealing with your clients most important decision of their entire lives?
3. High School Graduation Photos – or photos not from the last decade. I mean, I am just saying folks, do you really think your client believes that the suit you have on is from 2013, not 1973? Please, make sure your photo is recent.
4. Because we REALLY care – or other slogans and copy that are irrelevant to buyers and sellers, Use a meaningful copy that has some motivational  oomph and  isn’t chocked full of generic marketing terms and buzzwords. Remember, the goal is to build a real connection with consumers, not oversell them.
5. No transaction history – Sure personal branding is important, but nothing shows your expertise better than the deals you’ve closed. There are two easy ways to show this. One is including  your sales stats from previous years – and think more than just sales, what’s your average DOM and how many families did you help?Second, you should add your sold listings to your profile. Even if you’re a buyers agents, this is a great way to show off that you are a real closer and know the listings in your local market.

On the other side of the coin, here are list (and some examples) of what every agent should be doing to show off their expertise online:

Top 5 online marketing do’s for today’s market recovery

1. Keep it short and sweet – Just because your Facebook status or About Me field can be 63,206 characters, doesn’t mean it should. Use your profile (and your prospects time) wisely.
2. Helped 30 families in Clarkstown find their home in 2012 – Use the personal stats that show off not only quantity of deals, but also your neighborhood smarts.
3. Build a recommendations library – now that you can feature all of your recommendations in one place, you should. Your reviews look stronger when they’re all featured together.
4. Highlight  your recent success – I already said this above. Sold history, add it today.
5. Stop specializing in everything  – One fact about the market recovery is that it means a new wave of real estate professionals isn’t far behind. Carving out a niche real estate market now will have a huge return in the years ahead.

Mortgage lending standards relax a bit for low-risk borrowers:

• Mortgage Lenders Ease Standards for Safest Borrowers (WSJ)
• Mortgage Lending Loosens … But Far From Loose (CNBC)

Is it the right time to tackle the mortgage interest deduction?

• Housing Recovery Opens Window to Fix Homeowner Tax Breaks (Bloomberg)

Should you trust economists?

• What Use are Economists? (Project Syndicate)

We all know that answering a consumer’s question is a great way to win business. Answering them on Trulia Voices helps is even more valuable because you can generate leads from those on the feed and  homebuyers and sellers who will read your thoughts in the days, weeks, months, and even years to come.

Here are two quick tips on how to turn every answer into a prospecting opportunity:

Tip 1 – Be fast and be useful

When you answer questions on Trulia Voices, make sure your answer is actually useful to prospective buyers and sellers.

To do this, think about

• Are there concrete facts that you can provide?

• Are there pros and cons I can point out or clarify?,

• Do I have any even an anecdotes or stories that can make my response more personal and impactful?

Tip 2 – Be sure to include evergreen advice

It’s important to be aware that most home buyers and sellers have similar questions and many times search rather than asking themselves.

Making sure your advice has a little strategy and advice that’s good in any market is a great way to win a prospect now and in the days to come.  Your answer has infinite reach.

Remember, it’s one answer, but thousands of local buyers and sellers may see it. This turns your simple advice into a truly unlimited source of leads.

Visit Trulia Voices in your market now to start showing your knowledge and winning home buyers/sellers who need an agent now and will in the days to come.

Making a victorious offer is more art than science. When your clients learn that the home they want is getting more than one offer, panic, anxiety, and a number of other emotions can set in an endanger the deal.

Download, brand and share this handout to

• head off the stress of multiple offers with valuable insight
• provide practical helpful advice on the offer process
• brand yourself as the local market real estate expert

BONUS! Customize the guide with your brand & contact info

Use this handout to put your seller’s  knowledge to work. Download and share the handout’s survey page to help you hone in on the major selling points of your new potential listing.

How to customize this handout

To customize this download you’ll need Microsoft PowerPoint. Just follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Open the handout file and locate the noted sections you can fill in marked “agents.”

Step 2: Type the desired information into the blocks

Step 3: Save the file

Step 4: Print the file or convert it into a PDF to share electronically

Today’s buyers need to know that “property fit” is
about more than the most obvious factors like price and
simple square footage.

Download, brand and share this handout to

• help homebuyers see you as valuable source for finding the perfect property
• provide practical advice on the search process
• brand yourself as the local market real estate expert

BONUS! Customize the guide with your brand & contact info

Use this handout to put your seller’s  knowledge to work. Download and share the handout’s survey page to help you hone in on the major selling points of your new potential listing.

How to customize this handout

To customize this download you’ll need Microsoft PowerPoint. Just follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Open the handout file and locate the noted sections you can fill in marked “agents.”

Step 2: Type the desired information into the blocks

Step 3: Save the file

Step 4: Print the file or convert it into a PDF to share electronically

Prices Up 8.3% Year-over-Year, Rising in 95 of 100 Largest Metros
In April, asking home prices rose 1.3% month-over-month, seasonally adjusted. Quarter-over-quarter, prices are up 4.3%, seasonally adjusted. Year-over-year, prices are up 8.3% nationally and are higher than one year ago in 95 of the 100 largest metros.

Strong Job Gains Behind Sharp Home Price Increases
To understand why home prices are rising, let’s look at where they’re rising most. The 10 metros with the biggest Y-o-Y price gains include Las Vegas and Phoenix in the Southwest, seven metros from across California, and just one outside the West – Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI, next to Detroit. Most of these 10 markets had a severe housing crash after the bubble, creating bargains for investors and others to buy, and then rent out or hold. As we reported last month, investor activity has added to the rental supply resulting in single-family home rents flattening year-over-year.

But investors aren’t the whole story – not even close. Markets with big price leaps have something else in common: nine of these top 10 price gainers also have above-average job growth in the past year. National job growth was 1.5% Y-o-Y in March 2013 based on the latest available month for metro-level jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); only Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI– at 0.3% job growth – fell below that national average.

Jobs and Home Prices Across the Country
Jobs and housing demand go hand in hand. Why? Two reasons. When job growth attracts newcomers to an area, those newcomers need a roof over their heads. Plus, when people find jobs – even if they don’t move to a new city – they’ll often look for their own place to rent or buy instead of staying with roommates or parents. Census data from March 2013 show that just 12% of 25-34 year-olds with jobs live with their parents, versus 20% of 25-34 year-olds without jobs who live with their parents.

The correlation between job growth and home price growth is 0.4 and is statistically significant. In fact, looking across the 100 largest metros, only Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI, and neighboring Detroit have sharp price growth WITHOUT strong job growth: they sit pretty much alone in the lower-right part of the scatterplot graph pasted below. However, strong job growth doesn’t necessarily mean hyper growth in home prices.

Four Texas metros – Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas – have some of the fastest job growth in country but with price growth near today’s national average, ranging from 7-10% Y-o-Y (see toward the top left of the scatterplot).  Why doesn’t Texas have the same price growth as California despite having similar job growth? Because Texas didn’t suffer the housing bust as California and the rest of the Sunbelt did, so there’s less investor activity and price yo-yoing in Texas than in harder-hit markets.

Rents Fall in San Francisco and Las Vegas, Despite Soaring Prices
Rents are up 2.4% year-over-year nationally, rising faster than prices in just three of the 25 largest rental markets: Houston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Furthermore, rent growth has slowed: in 19 of the 25 largest rental markets, rent growth year-over-year was slower in April than three months earlier, in January. In some markets, rents and prices are moving in the opposite direction, or nearly so: the four metros with the slowest rent growth, or even declines – Seattle, Sacramento, Las Vegas, and San Francisco – all had price gains of more than 15% Y-o-Y.

The next Trulia Price Monitor and Trulia Rent Monitor will be released on Thursday, June 6, at 10 AM ET.

How did we put this report together? To recap the methodology, the Trulia Price Monitor and the Trulia Rent Monitor track asking home prices and rents on a monthly basis, adjusting for the changing composition of listed homes, including foreclosures provided by RealtyTrac. The Trulia Price Monitor also accounts for the regular seasonal fluctuations in asking prices in order to reveal the underlying trend in prices. The Monitors can detect price movements at least three months before the major sales-price indexes do. Our FAQs provide all the technical details.

But the same study revealed that there’s also pressure from the other end of the market – only 1 in 3 consumers said it would be better to sell now than a year from now.

These patient would-be sellers have pushed inventory to a 12-year low.

Real estate decisions are highly personal financial, family and lifestyle decisions, so the fact that the market is strongly tilted pro-sellers doesn’t mean that it is the right time for every seller to list their home.  That said, the long-frigid market offers abundant opportunities for agents who want to grow the listing side of their businesses by thawing out the selling, moving and lifestyle design plans so many sellers kept on ice for so long.

Here are a few strategic paths to go down if you want to build your seller-side business in today’s low-inventory market:

1.  Go back to the farm.

Just because something seems like it’s been done to death, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be resurrected – and reinvented – when the situation calls for it.  Farming is one such thing.

It’s been around forever, and that’s probably because it works.  Sure, it takes an investment of smarts, time, energy and money to cultivate a farm, a geographic area on which you focus your marketing activities. But if you do it wisely and consistently, it can also create an annuity of sorts – a long-term account of goodwill, favor and recognition of your name and your brand in the hearts and minds of prospective home sellers in the area(s) of your choosing.

Sellers in a specific area often share the same issues and concerns – and they certainly share the same fortunes when it comes to rising and falling property values.  This creates an opportunity for you to be strategic about choosing a farm, prioritizing areas in which homeowners over the last few years tended to stay put and hold onto their homes, rather than selling at super low distressed market prices.  These are the homeowners who are most amenable to being activated into sellers by smart, data-heavy, consistent farming that:

(a) constantly briefs them on how much homes in their area are now selling for, and

(b) provides them with other market insights as to how they can leverage today’s favorable market dynamics.

Be creative and current when it comes to the tactics you use to execute a farming strategy in this low-inventory market. Today’s farms should be cultivated both digitally and “IRL” (in real life).

Sitting Open Houses and sending out ‘Just Listed,’ ‘Just Sold’ and ‘Market Report’ postcards are all strategies that still work. But you can power-charge your reach by also farming online with Trulia Local Ads, YouTube market reports, and area Facebook pages, as well as by including web addresses (URLs) on your hard copy marketing materials to your Trulia blog, personal website and other online resources for farm-area sellers.

2.  Be where they are.

Never underestimate the power of sitting Open Houses on a regular basis in the areas where you want to be listing homes, even if they’re not your listings.  This old-school strategy costs very little and still works, not only for meeting buyers in the looky-loo stage, but also for meeting the neighbors who might be considering listing their homes.  Go back to basics, expressly inviting the neighbors with paper invitations or via an hour or door-knocking, if you can.

Hosting seminars, workshops and small-scale events at local community centers and coffee shops is another way to get in the right room with the right people. This gives you the opportunity to brief them on the market and showcase both your expertise and your dazzling personality, in one fell swoop.

3.  Double-down on data to prove the opportunity – Then do It again.

When marketing to get listings in a low inventory market, do not neglect to harness the power of data, in every one of your postcards, database newsletters, blog posts and social media activities.  Key metrics to stay on top of on a monthly basis for your hyperlocal areas of expertise include:

• How many/few homes are on the market (and how inventory levels are trending, relative to what’s normal for the area)

• How quickly homes are selling (and trends in days on market, or DOM)

• How far over-asking they are selling for, if your farm’s list price-to-sale price ratio is over 100%

• How many offers are being received – if you’re in a multiple offer market.

If you’re farming, this data should be the basis of a good portion of your marketing materials.  But if you’re not, there are still dozens of way to use data to show sellers the scope of the opportunity in front of them:

• Reach out to your own past client and referral database, using the warming market as a great reason to give them a ring and brief them on the state of the market with resources like Trulia’s Housing Barometer.

• Create a local market blog post or series of posts on Trulia Voices, and keep your Trulia Profile updated with your own listings’ success metrics like homes you’ve sold.

• Create data-focused articles for local area blogs and local or neighborhood newspapers.

• Update your own Facebook page with hard stats showcasing the heat of the market, and consider placing geo-targeted ads on Facebook headlined with a single, powerful data point, e.g.: Avg. Sale 10% Over Asking.

Get in the habit of never offering data without adding a layer of your own listings’ success record or your own expert insight on top. This one element can make the difference between activating a seller to list their home and activating a seller to call you to list their home. In fact, some of the most powerful social media “advertising” I’m seeing these days is when agents simply post their own listing success stories on their own Facebook pages.  Cost: $0.

As you start to market to thaw out and reactivate sellers, keep one thing in mind. Prospective sellers have been underwater, upside down and in a general recession fog for years.

They might have to hear that the US real estate market is coming back a dozen times before they realize that this information is applicable to them.  They might have to see data proving that their neighborhood and personal home values are making a comeback another ten times before they draw the conclusion that they might be able to sell.  They might have to be exposed to data showing that YOU are the right agent – or at least one of the agents they should speak with – another seven or ten times before they give you a ring.  And keep in mind that as much junk mail, emails, text messages, phone calls, IMs that people have to sort through, they might have to RECEIVE 20 or 30 well-crafted, strategic, smart messages about your value to them today before they act on one.

4. Stay committed to the process

Marketing to activate would-be sellers is, like virtually all marketing, a numbers game.  It’s a marathon not a sprint.  But don’t get discouraged – stay committed and consistent. Every local market report you send out, every Open House you sit, every Just Listed card you send, every Trulia Local Ad in which you appear contributes to the snowball of messages it will take to move a seller to warm up to the idea that now might be the right time to sell – and that you might just be the right agent to do it.