Is it OK to say that 2008 has generally been a depressing year for Real Estate? By now you have probably heard more than you ever wanted to about the subprime mortgage crisis but we can’t review 2008 without talking about it and actually not all the news is doom and gloom. We will also talk about news from iHOUSE as well as predictions for the 2009 market. After all, the whole point of studying the past is to prevent us from repeating it.

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis

Real estate news in 2008 was dominated by foreclosures caused by adjustable rate mortgages going into default. By some accounts there are nearly 10 million homes currently upside down. This will likely remain the big story into most of next year as… Read More

Exciting New Design for Our Marketing Website Home Page
As 2008 comes to a close iHOUSE has decided it was time for a refresh of our home page. Come see the New Look!

IDXPro is now available to Arizona Regional MLS Agents
iHOUSE has recently expanded its relationship with ARMLS so we can sell our best-in-class IDXPro® MLS Search Product to Arizona agents. Previously IDXPro was only available to Brokers. If you weren’t able to sign up before, now is the time to Test Drive!

iHOUSE has become an Approved Discount Vendor for Ohio CRISNet and Georgia FMLS
iHOUSE is now an Approved Discount Vendor for Ohio CRIS Net and Georgia FMLS agents. This means that all members of these MLSs will receive half off their start up fees when they sign up for any of our products!

iHOUSE Web Solutions has released a White Paper with definitive conclusions on the relationship between registration forms for viewing MLS information and lead generation. The question of whether to require registration in order to view MLS listings or to allow free access to website visitors has long been an issue for agents wanting to balance lead generation and a friendly user experience.

By analyzing registration data from over 5,000 IDXPro accounts during the third quarter of 2008, iHOUSE Web Solutions has provided a conclusive answer to this question, as well as information that could lead to 14x more IDX website leads.

Click here to read the full White Paper on the effect that registration forms have on IDX lead generation.

iHOUSE websites have easy iEdit tools that mean that you never have to know HTML to do pretty much anything with your iHOUSE website. But what if you wanted to add HTML? Simply find any text field and add ## at the beginning. This turns off iEdit Special Format Codes and turns on HTML for that field. One popular use of this is to embed Videos of an agents TV commercial hosted on YouTube onto the agents website. Learn more about this option in our Online Help Center.

In October our survey question was “Have you tried Pay-Per-Click marketing and did you like it?” We had a tie for the top spot, with an equal share of responses between readers who had tried and were happy with their Pay-Per-Click service and readers who had never heard of Pay-Per-Click marketing (each with 28% of responses).

This month’s survey question is: According to NAR, September home sales were at the highest point in 13 months. Has your market seen an increase in activity in the recent months?

(Poll is closed.)