The RealtyU® Group is the largest provider of real estate education and real estate training and a major distributor of online real estate courses. Our real estate school network has 205 campuses, 400 qualified real estate instructors, 27 education websites dedicated to real estate license training, CE and numerous other real estate career development services. RealtyU Online offers some 1,900 real estate courses online, including real estate licensing, CE, real estate designations, online skills training, productivity training and advanced real estate courses. With approximately 350,000 real estate agents trained in 2006 the RealtyU® Group of schools and education companies trained helped one Realtor® out of every four Realtors® with their real estate career. Visit Realty U.
The real estate industry is changing...more than ever it is imperitive that we as real estate professionals stay in tune and in touch with an evolving business!
Realty U
October 8th, 2009 
admin Open Office–A FREE Microsoft Office Substitute
September 21st, 2009 admin
OpenOffice.org 3
is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Fannie Mae Lookup Tool
September 21st, 2009 admin Use this tool to easily determine whether or not your prospective short sales are with Fannie Mae loans, guaranteeing a 6% commission.
Staging Vacant Homes…Virtually!
September 17th, 2009 admin RISMEDIA, September 17, 2009—When Atlanta Realtor and professional home stager Krisztina Bell took her substantial experience from staging hundreds of vacant homes and went “virtual,” she became a leader in what has quickly grown to be a national trend in a tough real estate market. Virtually Staging Properties, the business Bell and her husband, Jay, founded has been featured for its work in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, Real Estate Business and California Realtor, as home owners and real estate professionals turn to the new process of virtual staging as one the most cost-effective measures to help sell vacant homes. This new technique generates strong buyer traffic, at a fraction of the cost of traditional home staging, long recognized as one of the most effective means of marketing a property.
Virtually Staging Properties uses its patent-pending process to transform vacant listing photos into professionally-designed interiors using a proprietary library of attractive furnishings, accessories and artwork. The resulting images are almost indistinguishable from traditionally decorated rooms, with a realism and authenticity unmatched by other virtual techniques.
For an investment of as little as $225, the seller or agent can have their “empty box” listing photos transformed into a warm and inviting on-line home. Photos can be placed at the property so that when buyers arrive, the “staged” photographs provide the needed vision and inspiration.
“With 87 percent of buyers using the Internet to search for their next home, vacant homes are at a distinct disadvantage,” says Jay Bell. “Nearly all are uninspiring, with each one looking just like the next one, and the next one after that. A vacant property needs to stand out for some reason other than having the lowest price,” he explains.
Virtual staging ensures that buyers immediately recognize the rooms pictured, remember the property among the hundreds they preview on-line, envision themselves living in the home and, most importantly, want to go visit the property. In accordance with sound business ethics, Virtually Staging Properties does not utilize its design service to hide flaws or misrepresent the subject property. Further, the company requires its customers to inform potential buyers that the property has been virtually staged. The service is available in packages of three to five staged photographs, with prices ranging from $225 to $325.
Agents and homeowners around the country have used Virtually Staging Properties to drive buyer traffic to their vacant properties. According to Kelley Hughes-Liao, an Illinois Coldwell Banker agent, “We had a beautifully renovated but vacant condo that didn’t show well on the Internet – our largest target market. I needed the extra edge to drive buyer traffic into the home, and this did the trick. My property sold quickly. Lots of folks were stunned – including other agents.”
Nancy Campbell, VP of Sales for a Texas-based home builder used the service to virtually stage their model home. “The home really pops now,” she says. “We love the results and I know from past experience our showings will really take off.”
“While there will always be strong demand for traditional home staging, this virtual technique is an affordable solution for cash-strapped sellers who want to turn listing views into real buyer traffic,” explains Krisztina Bell. “It’s a perfect example of how new technology can help sell homes, even in today’s difficult market.”
For more information, visit www.virtuallystagingproperties.com.
Resize your Photos in Batches! Easy!!
September 15th, 2009 admin Fotosizer is a freeware batch image resizer tool. It resizes your photos in just 3 easy steps – 1. Photo selection, 2. select resize settings, then 3. Start the resize!
Increasingly, sharing photos on the internet is becomming more and more popular. Photos, represented as JPEG files from digital cameras, taken at high resolutions are far too large to send over the Internet, with some photos ending up at 5 mega bytes. Uploading one photo to a photo sharing website is fine, but 10, 20, or even more, this can take forever, especially on a dial-up connection.
With Fotosizer, you can shrink JPEG image files, along with other supported formats, and dramatically reduce internet transfer times, enabling you to quickly and easily prepare your image collections to be published on the web.
Help unlock the photos from your digital camera. Use Fotosizer to batch resize your photos making it easier and faster to email to friends, upload to photo sharing websites or upload to websites that offer photo printing services.
Fotosizer lets you resize in 3 easy steps, allowing you to choose the photos you want to resize, the dimensions, and where you want to save the new photos. Download here!
NAR Realtor Insurance
September 12th, 2009 admin What is the RCHI Program?
REALTORS® Core Health Insurance provides limited medical plans which are exclusively designed and priced specifically for NAR members…
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Simply put, it provides coverage for your everyday healthcare needs. Plan options can include:
Plans start as low as $70 per month. There are many useful ways to use these plans. Learn more here… |
Skype FREE Calls
September 10th, 2009 admin Free calls
It’s what Skype is made for.
Using Skype to call another person who also has Skype is totally free. Yep, absolutely nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
To anywhere in the world.
And at any time, day or night, morning or weekends.
Free calling for HomeChoice Agents!
Make FREE internet calls with Skype – download nowNow you can get started on the really cool stuff – such as making completely free and great quality calls from your computer. That’s the great thing about Skype, you can use your internet connection and turn your computer into an internet phone and make free Skype-to-Skype calls.
You and the person you’re calling will need to have a headset (or use your computer’s built-in microphone and speakers) to talk to each other. (Skype Store USA )
Condo Docs
August 19th, 2009 admin
Are you or your customer in need of Condo Docs? You can order them here: http://www.condocerts.com/
