I have written about this before, but it keeps happening so I keep ranting in the hopes that some real estate agents will figure out that some spam avoidance mechanisms are costing them perhaps thousands of dollars every year!  Apparently, someone subscribed to one of my courses, and here's part of the email I got back:

Hello About.com Real Estate Business Guide,

Your message about "Real Estate Blogging 101 in 4 Days: What's A Blog & How Difficult Is It?" was waitlisted.

Please add yourself to my Guest List so your messages will be delivered to my Inbox. Use the link below.

Click here to deliver your message.

Thank you,

I consider my time important too.  But the day I do this is the day I close up shop.  While I might or might not care enough or have the time or inclination to take another step to get my training to this individual, I'm not a buyer or seller prospect.  They are getting these same messages, and it's absolutely for certain that a large percentage of those who do will not take this extra step to get a question answered.  They'll just contact another agent who doesn't consider themselves so important.

OK, so I wanted a headline to get your attention.  However, I don't believe that open houses do anything to sell the subject homes in 99%+ of cases, and NAR's annual survey pretty much verifies that.  Here's an open house article quoting Realtors who like them, those who do not, and a consumer advocate who tells buyers and sellers to "just say no" to open houses.

With the announcement that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are introducing new rules for lenders in handling short sales, there just may be more of them in the near future.  While some lenders have already been more inclined to process short sales to avoid the delays and costs of foreclosure, these new rules are designed to speed up their responses to short sale offers.  With some response required within 30 days and a final result in 60 days or weekly reports thereafter, there should be a smoother and shorter road to a short sale closing.  Check out this step-by-step short sale tutorial.

Real estate professionals have come a long way in learning the ropes for SEO, Search Engine Optimization, of their real estate website content.  However, many still complain that they don't get enough qualified leads from their websites, and they wonder if their SEO efforts are worth it.

The problem isn't their SEO, but more likely their SVI, Site Visitor Interaction.  They're getting very little of it.  I've detailed this a little, including a comparison to content marketing as used by Internet affiliate marketers in this post about real estate content marketing.  Give it a look.