For most people, analytics is one of those subjects that other people pay attention to. There are a number of reasons why this is the case: there’s not enough time, it doesn’t seem important, or maybe it seems way too complicated. For years I was in the same boat, relying on a webmaster or someone from my marketing team to interpret all those bits of information into something that they thought I would find interesting or useful. Those were always wholly unsatisfying meetings, sitting with my marketing manager, asking questions like, “Why aren’t our visitors buying?” or, “We made some great content, why isn’t anyone reading it?” All I wanted was a straight answer. Looking back, I understand now that I wasted so much time relying on others to help me discover the answers locked inside all that information.

As an entrepreneur and marketer, I know there is so much value in creative inspiration and intuition that I would never discount, but the power of understanding the actions of you customers and the effectiveness of your efforts comes from analytics. If someone had told me that I could see what people were viewing on my website in real time, exactly what content they read, how long they read it, where they came from, what device they used, and whether or not they had been to my site before, I would have been much more excited about understanding analytics. A lot has changed in the last decade. For one, I love analytics! It’s no longer like reading Latin, which for the record would always put me to sleep. Granted, the tools have come a long way to make it easier for me to experience this love: they’re better, cheaper, and easier to set up. If only I had known then what I know now, I would have taken control of my analytics from the start. This guide is about getting you started quickly and easily with Google analytics so you don’t have to rely on others to tell you what’s happening with your website.

“Analytics is simply a way for you to track the activity on your website. The number of visits it receives, where people come from, how long they stay, and what they’re looking at while they’re on your site.” – Jeff Bernheisel, 1000watt

So let’s start with why analytics are so important. It used to be that understanding potential customers’ intent was limited to three things: Did they contact you? Did they fill out a form on your website? Or did they visit an open house?  Since we know that more homebuyers are making up their minds about properties they’re interested in online way before moving the conversation offline, it’s crucial to know more about the customer life cycle and their activities on and off your website.

Google Analytics, sometimes abbreviated as “GA,” is the best free service available for generating detailed statistics about how visitors are getting to your website and what they are doing once they’re there.

There are dozens of reports and hundreds of ways to view them, below are some of the most popular metrics to start with. You will also be able to use a date comparison on any of these reports to see month over month progress.

Google Analytics is able to make all of its measurements via a “page tag” (called the Google Analytics Tracking Code), which is a snippet of code that lives on all of the pages of your website. The page tag collects visitor data and sends it to Google Analytics, where it is then organized into charts, graphs, and lists. Unlike earlier analytics tools, which were geared toward technologists and webmasters, Google Analytics was created for marketers: you don’t have to be a developer to get started.  Getting started is really simple – just follow the outline below.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL INFOGRAPHIC

 Getting a handle on your analytics is the only way to gauge the ROI of your blogging and content marketing efforts. At work, I measure the lead and customer generation my company gets from all the channels: Google Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, Linkedin, and organic search results to name a few. We use a combination of Google Analytics, MixPanel and Infusionsoft to help us validate any time and effort we spend on content and inbound marketing.

“Being data informed is critical for any business. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that offers many benefits. The application enables you to measure conversion, user engagement, technology trends and more. Best of all, it’s free.” – Tom Flanagan, VP of Marketing & Technology at Residential Properties

I hope this is sinking in. It’s game changing and it’s available to every business that is serious about marketing online. By including analytics in your marketing conversation you can start having actionable discussions about content and social media ROI as a real, measurable number, and not some mythical figure that no one knows.

Your Questions:

What questions do you have about measuring the ROI of your blogging and social media efforts? What tools are you using to get your stats? Finally, if you’re willing to share, tell us a little about the effect your blogging has had on ROI.

Former tech executive turned blogger Bill McBride was one of the first to suggest that homes were precariously overvalued back in 2005. When he spots a trend, people have learned to listen.

McBride — who gets up early every day to post his analyses of news on the finance and economics blog he founded in 2005, Calculated Risk — thinks housing inventory won’t bottom until 2014.

Calculated Risk author Bill McBride discusses home prices and inventories with Inman News reporter Paul Hagey.

Existing-home inventory, which makes up about 90 percent of homes on the market, has dropped about 20 percent year-over-year for the last 15 months and is at levels not seen since around the year 2000, McBride pointed out.

Sustained, large year-over-year declines in inventory indicate that a bottom is near, McBride said.

Low inventory currently acts as the limiting reagent to a full-scale housing market recovery, according to some economists.

Data from the National Association of Realtors showed 1.74 million existing homes were for sale in January, a scarcity, in raw numbers of homes for sale, not seen since December 1999.

As supply continues to shrink, McBride said, demand, and prices along with it, will continue to go up, enticing more homeowners and investors to sell their homes, which will bring inventory, and the housing market, up.

“Prices are going to go up more than expected in coming months,” McBride said.

Source: Calculated Risk

McBride, whom the Los Angeles Times profiled in January, began writing a weekly post on housing inventory on Calculated Risk this year.

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The California Association of Realtors announced a new TV, Web, radio and print ad campaign today that highlights the positive impact its 155,000 members have on the state’s economy.

Two 30-second TV spots, featuring the "ripple" effect that the facilitation of home buying and selling has on the economy and families, will air on the ABC network in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco from today through June 16. In addition, on April 17, a spot will air during the network’s hit show "Modern Family" in the three markets.

The campaign, dubbed "Ripple," continues the association’s "Champions of Home" campaign and includes ad time on the Clear Channel Radio station, display ads on realtor.com, and mobile ads.

CAR says it expects the two TV spots to run 732 times on ABC during the 11-week period and to result in 55 million views.

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A national multiple listing service run by the National Association of Realtors should be ready by late summer, the large trade association announced today.

NAR has been working for the last decade to put all of the nation’s agent-represented homes for sale into one database, consolidating the 800-plus multiple listing services in the U.S. in the process.

"Everybody has been on board with the national MLS idea for a long time and we’ve been working on it for the last decade," the trade group said in a press release.

Brian Boero, co-founder of real estate marketing and design firm 1000watt, who predicted NAR’s national MLS move in one of his "Friday Flash" blog posts five years ago, said, "It’s a great move by NAR. I wonder what took them so long." 

"It’s about damn time," said Matt Cohen, chief technology officer of real estate consulting firm Clareity Consulting.

"In some cities there were five or more MLSs!" Cohen said. "How and why did that even happen?"

Many third-party MLS vendors, such as Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios, are ecstatic. "Now we won’t have to make multiple versions of one product to work with each MLS. We can just make one!"

Some brokers, who have been concerned about the businesses third-party listing portals like Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com have built using listing data, are expressing relief.

"Hallelujah," said the spokesman of a large Minneapolis-based brokerage that pulled all of its listings from the big three portals last year.

However, the brokerage will not send its listings to the national MLS because the firm wants to continue focusing on generating leads from its own website, the spokesman said.

Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com, which had been battling for consumer eyeballs as de-facto nationwide MLSs in recent years, are working to carve out a new niche.

"We’ll still be a leader on mobile," one Zillow exec said. 

Editor’s note: For further context on this report, please check this story’s date. And note that all or portions of this article may be based entirely on anonymous and/or fictitious sources and erroneous and/or facetious information.

For similar stories posted today, click here. 

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On the first day of April each year, communities, businesses and news outlets come up with stories intended to fool, amuse, and, sometimes, satirize. Here’s a roundup of the posts Inman News came across in the residential real estate space today.

National Association of Realtors shutters Realtors Property Resource: If you’re a member of the National Association of Realtors, as of today, you no longer have access to, or are paying for, the funds-draining national property database Realtors Property Resource, according to Greg Robertson on his blog at Vendor Alley.

"Our long national nightmare is over," said NAR CEO Dale Stinton, via a "quote" in a purported NAR press release shown on the blog.

Never fear, Realtors, the post says that NAR has decided to invest in another industry important to agents — cars. "Today’s cars aren’t designed for the average Realtor, so we thought we needed to do something about it," said NAR President Gary Thomas in a "statement."

Seattle broker launches homebuying tournament platform for listings: For those home sellers in Seattle who know that a playoff system is the best way to determine a winner (see college football), Seattle brokerage Findwell has launched a new "March Madness"-like bracket system that will help them find the best buyers.

Eight buyers –- six chosen based solely on ranking of initial offer price and two at-large bids — will be pitted against each other in three single-elimination rounds, Findwell explained in a blog post.

The two homebuyers that make it to the championship round will try to woo the neighbors at a soiree at the home to win the tournament and the home.

New dating site for real estate pros, "On the Market":  Real estate professionals are busy, "generating leads … showing homes, and filing paperwork," said real estate software and marketing firm Market Leader. So the firm has developed a dating site exclusive to real estate pros.

No news on whether the firm has a customer relationship management platform to handle leads from the new dating site. Sign up here.

Redfin adopts new shark species as mascot: Seattle-based brokerage Redfin announced that it has adopted a new shark species discovered by a Redfin employee while fishing from his kayak in Puget Sound near Seattle as its mascot.

Photo of the new Redfin Shark species.

The new shark species has an actual red dorsal fin and biologists have given it the name "Redfin Shark," a blog post on Redfin that announced the discovery noted.

Redfin is launching an advertising campaign around the fish, which will include three days of sponsorship on the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week program in 2013.

Other news

Google introduced Gmail Blue, a result of "moonshot" thinking. The popular email platform now offers a "blue that was reminiscent of nature but better than what nature created."

Virgin Airlines announced it now has developed the technology to produce glass-bottomed planes. "I am incredibly proud of yet another aviation breakthrough which has been years in the making," wrote Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, in a blog post.

Artist’s rendition of Virgin Airlines’ glass-bottomed plane.

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A price quote means nothing until it is properly locked with the lender. A rate lock, as it is commonly called, is the lender’s commitment that it will make the specified loan at the specified price within a specified future period.

The price includes not only the interest rate but also points, which are upfront charges expressed as a percent of the loan; fixed-dollar charges; and (if the loan is adjustable-rate) the margin and maximum rate.

Locking has become more difficult: Before the financial crisis, if you started early enough in the day, it was relatively easy to contact a lender and lock the price the same day. Today, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Delays are more frequent today than before the financial crisis, and the delay periods are longer. Before the crisis, income and asset documentation as well as appraisal requirements were often waived, facilitating the locking process. There are few, if any, waivers today.

Determining the property value, which has a major bearing on the terms of a loan, is particularly problematic. Before the crisis, lenders would lock based on the borrower’s or broker’s estimate of value if it was a refinance, or based on the sale price if it was a purchase, confident that in the great majority of cases the appraisal would confirm the value. Appraisals in buoyant markets generally did.

Today, lenders cannot have this confidence because appraisals have become conservative, and they also take longer. So lenders do one of two things: Either they require an appraisal before they lock, or they lock without it but require that the appraisal, when it materializes, show a value above some level for the lock to remain valid.

Lock delays carry risk to borrowers: Because market prices are highly volatile, lenders reset them every morning, and often during the day as well. This makes it very likely that the price on the lock day will not be the same as the price quoted to the borrower earlier, on which the borrower’s decision to proceed was based. While prices may change in either direction, the risks to the borrower are not symmetrical. Borrowers waiting to lock will always pay more if the price has risen, but they won’t necessarily pay less if the price has declined.

Lock scamming is all too easy: A lender who locks at the current price when that price is higher than the one quoted to the borrower earlier should do the same when the current price is lower. However, few borrowers are likely to object if they are locked at the price they were quoted previously, and my soundings suggest that this is a common occurrence. The irony is that the borrowers who consider themselves victimized are the ones who pay a higher price following an increase in the market price, whereas the real victims are those who pay the same price following a market decline.

The good faith estimate (GFE) doesn’t help: The GFE is a federally required disclosure of rates, fees and other loan characteristics that must be provided to the borrower within three business days of the submission of a loan application. It is designed to protect borrowers against a variety of hazards, but it does not protect them against lock scamming.

If the loan has been locked at the time the GFE is issued, any scamming has already occurred. If the loan is not locked when the GFE is issued, the rates and fees shown on the GFE are pre-lock quotes similar to those quoted to the borrower orally, but many borrowers don’t understand this. The GFE states that "the interest rate for this GFE is available through [date]," and if the loan has not been locked, the lender enters a day that has already expired. This is a horribly roundabout and confusing way to tell the borrower that the loan is not locked.

Protecting yourself against lock scamming: When the market price changes between the time the lender quotes a price to the borrower and the time the loan is locked, the lock price should be based on the "twin sibling rule": That rule states that the price locked will be the price the lender would quote on the same day on the identical transaction to the borrower’s twin requesting a price quote. If the new market price is below the price quoted to the borrower earlier, the lender will lock the lower price. If the new market price is higher than the price quoted earlier, the lender should not lock until explicitly authorized to do so by the borrower.

How does a borrower verify that the lender has followed this rule? One way is to monitor market changes on a day-to-day basis. The best tool for this purpose is my daily series on wholesale mortgage prices.

Even better is to deal with lenders who provide access to their pricing systems through third-party multi-lender websites, where borrowers can check their price on the system when they lock. Three sites that provide this facility are mortgagemarvel.com, zillow.com and mtgprofessor.com, which is mine.

The writer is professor of finance emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Comments and questions can be left at www.mtgprofessor.com.

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It’s always hard to predict how long it will take to find a home to buy. Given the current low-inventory environment, it may take you longer than it would in a balanced market that has enough homes for sale to satisfy the current buyer demand.

Patience needs to be a key component of your home search mentality. Even if a home you like a lot comes along quickly in your search, other buyers may have the same idea. You could end up in competition. If you aren’t the winning bidder, don’t let disappointment immobilize you.

To prepare yourself to buy in this market, plan to look at every new listing that comes close to satisfying your wish list. Accept that you won’t find everything on your wish list. Successful buyers make sacrifices. Just make sure to make intelligent compromises.

For example, don’t get so overwhelmed by the urge to buy now that you overlook that a home you like won’t work for you for long. Buying and selling is expensive; you don’t want to do it often. Make sure that a home you buy will suit your needs for years to come.

There are benefits to seeing a new listing that’s a possibility for you in person rather than looking at it only online or having your agent describe it to you. In a low-inventory market, it’s vitally important to become an expert on local pricing. Follow up with your agent on every listing you liked and find out how much it sold for and how many offers were made.

This way you will know when a listing is underpriced, priced close to market value, or overpriced for the neighborhood. The lower-priced properties tend to attract more buyers. If you’ve educated yourself about local market pricing, you can distinguish between a listing that is underpriced and one that is fairly priced.

HOUSE HUNTING TIP: You can save yourself a lot of time and disappointment if you don’t make offers on underpriced listings that attract five or more offers, particularly if you can’t go much higher than the list price. In one instance, a Piedmont, Calif., buyer was recently enthralled with a listing priced at $895,000. When 10 offers came in, she decided not to jump into the fray because she couldn’t pay more than $1 million. The listing sold for $1.4 million.

Some real estate agents encourage their buyers to make an offer even if they haven’t a chance because they feel it gives buyers a chance to get their feet wet. The problem with this approach is that after slogging through the mud and losing out four or five times, you may feel burned out and drop out of the house hunting search altogether.

Make sure your real estate agent is in touch with the listing agent of a listing you covet so that you have a sense of how much competition there might be. Then based on your pricing expertise, your financial capabilities and how close the house matches what you want, you can make an educated decision about whether to make an offer.

Find out how much work a listing will need. Ask for a disclosure package of seller disclosures and reports, if they are available. Factor this information into the affordability equation. A listing priced at $700,000 that requires $200,000 of repairs isn’t affordable if you can pay only $750,000 at the most.

Have your agent watch for listings that aren’t well-marketed. Out-of-area agents often don’t know how local agents generate activity on their listings. The strategy used on the Piedmont house above was to price low and have more than one open house before hearing offers.

THE CLOSING: An undermarketed listing can be a buying opportunity in today’s market.

Dian Hymer, a real estate broker with more than 30 years’ experience, is a nationally syndicated real estate columnist and author of “House Hunting: The Take-Along Workbook for Home Buyers” and “Starting Out, The Complete Home Buyer’s Guide.”

Inman News announced today that applications for Inman Incubator, a real estate startup accelerator program, are now open.

The Inman Incubator program is a yearlong mentorship, advisory and promotional program to help up to 25 new companies in the real estate industry succeed. The program is open to technology startups, brokerages, agents, service providers, and others in the real estate industry with new, innovative products and business models.

Inman News founder and Publisher Brad Inman explains the Inman Incubator program.

The program is a launchpad for companies that will define innovation in the real estate industry in the next decade, by providing mentorship, promotion, access to specialized resources, business-building connections and ongoing support.

"We are in the unique position of being able to do more than just talk about change. Inman News can champion innovation in a way that no other organization can," said Inman News Publisher Brad Inman. "With our mentors, connections and resources, Inman Incubator will support game-changing companies that will define innovation in the real estate industry for the coming decade."

Participating startups will receive mentoring by the top minds in the real estate and technology space; $100,000 in promotional consideration from Inman News; referrals to specialized startup accountants, banks, lawyers, technical groups and other service providers; a business plan review; ongoing support; and two founder meetups per year in San Francisco and New York City.

Inman Incubator mentors include leaders who have built their own businesses from the ground up: Lockhart Steele, founder, Curbed; Pete Flint, CEO, Trulia; Spencer Rascoff, CEO, Zillow; Teresa Boardman, Realtor and Inman News columnist; Austin Allison, founder, dotloop; Sherry Chris, CEO, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate; and Michele Serro, founder, Doorsteps. More mentors will be announced soon.

Applications will be accepted April 1st through May 15th. More information and answers to frequently asked questions are available at www.inman.com/incubator. Selected startups will be announced at the Real Estate Connect conference, July 10-12, in San Francisco.

Questions about sponsorship opportunities for Inman Incubator? Email incubator@inman.com.

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Are you still stuck in "E" rather than moving forward into "V"?

If so, it’s time to shift from email, e-cards, email newsletters, blogs, and auto-responders to the next generation of communication: vmail, vcards, vresponders, viewsletters, and vlogs.

I recently spoke with Roger Noujeim of ListedBy.com about his take on the latest trends. He noted that ListedBy clients who use video to promote their listings generate significantly more traffic than those who don’t.

He also noted that there are 700 videos posted on Twitter every minute. Noujeim described this trend as going from "E" to "V." In fact, Cisco projects that 90 percent of all Web traffic in 2014 will be devoted to video. If you haven’t jumped on the video bandwagon, here’s how to get started.

From email to vmail

People retain 10 percent of what they hear and 15 percent of what they see. The average person spends about eight seconds viewing a text message. In contrast, video email is viewed on average to 85 percent completion. Consequently, to get better results from your email communication, shift from regular email and text messaging to vmails.

Vmails garner greater attention because they are more personally compelling. For example, instead of sending past clients postcards, send them a video message wishing them a happy birthday, update your current sellers with buyer feedback about their home, or review next week’s marketing plan.

An easy way to begin is with the free service from Eyejot.com. Eyejot allows you to connect in a "self-contained, spam-free environment." It works on any platform, including mobile devices.

With Eyejot, there is no software to download or install. Just log in to your account, record or upload your video, and send. The recipient gets a friendly email message telling them they have a new video message, and they can watch it with a single click. You can use Eyejot to send "vcards" rather than a traditional business card as well.

Vresponders and viewsletters

Once upon a time, auto-responders seemed like a good idea. Most people today, however, feel they are canned and impersonal. Furthermore, auto-responders are a great way for spammers to discover whether your email address is valid.

In contrast, a video response, even if it is canned, seems more personal. Instead of telling people in text that you are out of the office, you can use your vresponder to create a more personalized message thanking them for contacting you and informing them that you are eager to be back in contact with them as soon as possible.

There are two solutions that provide a glimpse of where real estate video communication is heading in the future. Iwowwe.com and Talk Fusion have very slick applications that allow you to send vmails, conduct video-conferencing, as well as use video-autoresponders. Like Eyejot, Iwowwe provides a free video email service.

Both Iwowwe and Talk Fusion provide a suite of video communication and marketing products. (Iwowwe is $20.00 per month and TalkFusion, which offers a larger suite of products, is $35.00 per month plus a set-up fee.)

What I found particularly intriguing is the notion of having a "viewsletter." This is a very attractive newsletter format that has at least one, and sometimes two, windows where you can upload video. The video plays within the viewsletter in a format that is reminiscent of the "Daily Prophet" in the Harry Potter movies. Imagine how much more powerful it would be to offer a "viewsletter" to the people you meet as opposed to an email or traditional print newsletter.

There are hundreds of ways agents can use this tool to market their businesses. For example, you could use the video to update your community in terms of the prices, market conditions, or anything else that has to do with the real estate market.

You could also use it to share the local lifestyle or special events in your area. Interview the basketball coach about the upcoming game, capture images from the blizzard that buried everything in white, or record fun things that make living in your area great.

Vlogs

How long does it take you to write 160 words? Did you know that you can create a 160 word vlog (video blog) in just one short minute? Blogging has always been a chore, even when you’re a good writer. "Writer’s block" is a real issue for professional writers and even more so for agents.

In contrast, most agents are good at talking. You can now create a "vlog" simply by posting to your own blog site, or if you don’t want to deal with the hassle, set up a Facebook business page where you post your videos. A vlog can be an alternative to a video newsletter or a supplement to it as well.

The smart move is to start looking at ways to employ video in your business. We know Google loves video (it owns YouTube) and ranks sites that have video more highly. The real estate business is definitely heading in this direction. The sooner you begin using video in your business, the greater your advantage over other agents will be.

Bernice Ross, CEO of RealEstateCoach.com, is a national speaker, trainer and author of the National Association of Realtors’ No. 1 best-seller, "Real Estate Dough: Your Recipe for Real Estate Success." Hear Bernice’s five-minute daily real estate show, just named "new and notable" by iTunes, at www.RealEstateCoachRadio.com. You can contact her at Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com or @BRoss on Twitter.

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Redfin launched a redesigned website this week and Inman News caught up with the Seattle-based brokerage’s CEO, Glenn Kelman, to talk about its new features.

The site’s new design and features include more prominent Redfin branding, increased white space, larger property images on property detail pages and a new way for users to monitor homes they may want to tour.

In February, Redfin launched "Offer Insights," a somewhat controversial tool consumers can use to see some details about offers to homes that Redfin agents make offers on.

Currently, Redfin, which invests heavily in technology and rebates a portion of its agents’ commissions to buyers and sellers, is active in the following markets: Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Houston; Las Vegas; Long Island and Westchester County, N.Y.; Oregon; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Sacramento, Calif.; San Francisco Bay Area; Seattle; Southern California; and Washington, D.C.

Unlike many brokerages, Redfin employee-agents don’t work on commission, but on salary, and receive bonuses based on customer reviews.

Redfin also works with non-employee partner agents, who work for other brokerages but fill in when business falls outside of Redfin’s core operating area, a listing comes in below the firm’s minimum operating price, or is in an area experiencing high demand.

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Carrington Property Services has joined forces with financial services company LendingXpress to offer small lenders Carrington’s asset management services to handle their inventory of bank-owned homes.

San Antonio, Texas-based LendingXpress, a Southwest Business Corp. (SWBC) company, will market the services to the credit unions and community banks in its customer base, offering them a new approach to managing REO (real estate-owned) inventories based on best practices of major lenders, the companies said in an announcement.

Santa Ana, Calif.-based Carrington Property Services, which specializes in REO asset management, is an indirect subsidiary of Carrington Holding Co., the parent company of the Carrington family of companies.

As part of the agreement, Carrington and LendingXpress plan to roll out REO asset management services catering to credit unions and community banks in the second quarter.

"While credit unions and community banks have traditionally held smaller inventories of REO properties than major national banks, the complexities associated with the day-to-day management and servicing of those assets can be just as challenging," the companies said.

Carrington’s REO asset management services include a property assessment to help lenders determine whether to rent or sell the property and if repairs are needed; occupant resolution; property repairs; and either rental management or the marketing and disposition of REO properties, the announcement said. Asset management is handled by the company’s national network of real estate and property management professionals through a platform that functions as a central point of contact.  

LendingXpress will incorporate these services within its existing offering of third-party products and services, the companies said.

"This strategic relationship with LendingXpress and SWBC will enable Carrington to expand its reach and extend its full continuum of services to the credit union and community banking market," said Steve Ozonian, chief real estate officer for Carrington Holding Company LLC, in a statement.

"Blending Carrington’s detailed knowledge of end-to-end REO workflow with SWBC’s intimate understanding of what these financial institutions need will enable us to produce a solution specifically designed to maximize returns and minimize costs in a highly regulated environment for our business partners."

Carrington and LendingXpress are not the only companies interested in helping smaller lenders work like bigger ones. Los Angeles-based customer relationship management software company Leads360 earlier this month began offering a new CRM platform, Leads360 Express, specifically designed to help small business owners, including small mortgage companies and loan officers, compete effectively with larger rivals.

Such products may be of particular interest to mortgage companies or real estate brokerages with in-house or affiliated mortgage businesses.

In November, Carrington Property Services launched a national network to help real estate brokerage firms work with institutional investors interested in distressed properties.

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Anyone on Facebook in the last few days has likely seen the pink-and-red logo that many people are setting as their profile images this week in support of gay marriage, the subject of two cases the U.S. Supreme Court is currently hearing.

Bond New York, which claims to be the largest independently-owned brokerage in New York City with 500 agents and staff, has incorporated features of the Human Rights Campaign logo that’s come to represent support of gay marriage into its own branding.

Original Bond New York logo

The firm often cycles through different logos on its website, much the way Google does on its homepage. This logo, signifying support of gay marriage, has special meaning for the firm’s co-founder Noah Freedman, he told The Real Deal.

Freedman decided to use the logo to signify his support of his gay father, he told the New York City-focused real estate publication.

In November last year, other real estate pros made a statement in support of gay marriage.

The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors’ nearly 7,000 members took a stance against a proposal to amend Minnesota’s constitution to recognize only the marriages of opposite-sex couples, writing that it would have a “negative impact on equal access to housing and property rights in Minnesota” and “would enshrine an inherent unfairness and system of inequality, specifically related to housing and homeownership, into the Minnesota Constitution.”

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Long-term rates fell this week to the lows of 2013, mortgages stickier than 10-year T-notes. Although long Treasurys made it to 1.85 percent, mortgages are still 3.75 percent or so — the mortgage market frightened to death that any loan it buys today will live until its 360th payment.

Trading everywhere has ceased for Passover, Good Friday, and Easter, but next week brings a flood of brand-new information for March, capped on Friday by employment data. Thus a good time to reflect.

I do not recall a moment in which so many economic elements at the same time have been at points of inflection. In the old days (five years ago) nothing much mattered except U.S. data. In global markets the world is more important than the U.S.

1. Rates are down because of Europe. Period. Euro elites are secure looking down their noses: “Cyprus is unique, the euro-zone will be fine, just a little austerity and economic reform ahead.” Au contraire… bank funding costs in March everywhere except Germany rose by 25 percent (who wants a haircut at shoulder-level?); French and Spanish 10-year yields are opening versus German; nobody is making fiscal progress, the combination of austerity and euro-shackles making recovery impossible. Yet everyone who has cried euro-failure “Wolf!” has been premature. Or wrong: maybe there is no wolf at all. Or, if the wolf finally does arrive, the bigger the shock.

2. The stock market set a new high yesterday, greeted by no exuberance. Usually a technical “breakout” like this is followed by a big run. Not. This new high is a half-inch above the same top in 1999 and 2007. Whee. And yet … stocks could really run and bring back the wealth effect.

3. That wealth effect may already be here. This morning’s news: personal incomes jumped 1.1 percent in February and spending with them, up 0.6 percent.

4. More. Home prices are rising in every desirable market nationwide. Discounting the 25 percent drop in fewer distressed sales, which is making prices appear to rise faster than they are, the national move is between 5 percent and 10 percent annualized. The most attractive markets are now in auction conditions, multiple offers the rule. Still, ordinary markets are flat.

5. The absence of housing inventory is weird. Even big production builders are having a hard time with credit, impeding construction. Maybe inventory is low because people have no place to move to. But, maybe, household conditions are weaker than we think, beyond the underwaters, and we’re enjoying a spurt from the fraction of households making it through the Great Recession unscathed.

6. Remember the Fiscal Cliff, tax increases, the sequester? Are we suddenly so healthy that none of that mattered?

7. Japan. Gross national debt is now 245 percent of GDP. Excluding the portion held by the Bank of Japan, 145 percent. 10-year Japanese government bonds pay 0.55 percent, that yield down by half in one year. The Bank of Japan will within weeks begin to buy Japanese government bonds (and a lot else) with the intention of reversing 1 percent deflation into 2 percent inflation. This is the ultimate extreme of the central-banking project: ignite Japan’s economy and generate tax revenue (today adequate to fund less than half of government spending; more than half of that interest alone), or suffer the most spectacular default in history.

8. Perfesser Bernanke is going to retire at year-end. Vice Chair Janet Yellen is in the lead to replace him, and this week New York Fed prez Bill Dudley began his campaign. Both are very able, both deep believers in a strong-intervention Fed. Whoever gets the Presidential nod at about Labor Day will then face confirmation hearings in the Senate, and the most ignorant and undignified philosophical combat since dinosaurs were placed in a museum beside Adam and Eve. Markets will be a tad uneasy.

We have all wished to escape the mire of the last five years. This way?

Do enjoy the long weekend. Stuff in the fan at dawn Monday.

What to you call an anesthetized rabbit? The ether bunny. What to you call a row of rabbits jumping backward? A receding hare line.

Source: Bloomberg

The yen weakening faster than ever before, the Bank of Japan printing Weimar-style, and 10-year Japanese government bonds headed for 0 percent yield. Go figure.

Source: Census Bureau via dshort.com.

After debt, the biggest questions of our time: Why has the top 20 percent succeeded so much more than the bottom 60 percent? How much (more) to take from the top 20 percent? How to help the 60 percent succeed? Until we figure out some answers and get moving on them, recovery will be distorted and in question.

Lou Barnes is a mortgage broker and nationally syndicated columnist based in Boulder, Colo. He can be reached at lbarnes@pmglending.com.

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Email	Letter to the Editor

Fraud by building contractors is a distressingly common occurrence.

How’s this for a nightmare scenario: You agree to pay a contractor $400,000 to tear down part of your house and put in an addition. While the work is going on, you, your spouse, and five children stay with the wife’s parents. The contractor tells you that the work is progressing according to schedule and you make multiple payments.

Suddenly, the contractor dies. He was only 30 years old. It turns out he was a drug addict. You discover that the contractor failed to do much of the work he said had been done. Moreover, considerable damage was done to the house during construction because the contractor failed to protect it from the weather.

Naturally, you sue everybody you can. The only entity that has any money you can collect from is the deceased contractor’s insurer. Unfortunately, it turns out that the insurance policy lapsed because the premiums weren’t paid. In the end, you settle with the insurer for $10,000.

All this happened to James and Gaetana Urtis. They figured that at least they could deduct some of their losses from their income taxes. They claimed a $188,070 theft loss deduction — the amount they paid the contractor that they determined he had pocketed instead of doing the promised work.

But — you guessed it — the IRS denied the deduction.

However, this story has a somewhat happy ending. The Urtis’s appealed their case to the U.S. Tax Court and won. The court rejected the IRS’s claim that the Urtis’s were not entitled to a theft loss deduction because the contractor’s actions did not constitute theft under state law. The contractor had committed criminal fraud when he knowingly induced the Urtis’s to enter into a contract which he had no intention of carrying out. Thus, the Urtis’s were entitled to a $188,070 theft loss deduction. (Urtis v. Comm’r, T.C. Memo. 2013-66.)

Uninsured losses of property due to theft are tax deductible. In the case of personal property, however, a theft loss deduction is a personal itemized deduction claimed on Schedule A. Such losses are deductible only if, and to the extent, they exceed 10 percent of the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income. Moreover, the first $100 of such losses are not deductible.

For tax purposes, theft includes far more than a mugging or burglary. It includes "any criminal appropriation of another’s property by swindling, false pretenses, and any other form of guile." Thus, you can be entitled to theft loss where you can show that a contractor deliberately lied and deceived you to get your money.

However, you don’t have a theft loss where a contractor does the promised work, but you don’t like the quality. Poor workmanship is not fraud and thus does not result in a theft loss. At most, it is negligence and/or breach of contract. For this reason, the Urtis’s could not claim a theft loss for the damage done to their home due to the contractor’s negligence in failing to protect it from the weather during contraction.

Stephen Fishman is a tax expert, attorney and author who has published 18 books, including "Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Contractors, Freelancers and Consultants," "Deduct It," "Working as an Independent Contractor," and "Working with Independent Contractors." He welcomes your questions for this weekly column.

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