"I made a mistake," Greenspan said, "in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms." "The Federal Reserve had as good an economic organization as exists," Greenspan said. "If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem . . . we have to ask ourselves: Why is that? And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance." *To view the full post and video, please visit the San Diego real estate market blog.

California home foreclosures - In a report issued today by California-based research group RealtyTrac it was reported that California home foreclosure filings fell 32 percent on a monthly basis but were up 36 percent from a year ago. California remained the third hardest-hit state in the collapsed real estate sector, after Nevada and Florida. 

Some prior posts on home foreclosures:

San Diego Real Esate Sales Increase

San Diego Condominium Sales Price Appreciation

#1 Key To Purchasing Real Estate in the San Diego Market

San Diego California Home Sellers Lose Big

The San Diego California Real Estate Great Depression

1.2 Million Homes in Foreclosure

Survey Says Home Values Must Fall Another 14%

A Record Number of Homeowners Avoid Foreclosure in the Second Quarter

Jumbo Financing and the Impact on The San Diego Real Estate Market

Home Builders Pushed 100% Loans to Move Properties

San Diego County Foreclosures up 125% from 2007

CALIFORNIA HOME FORECLOSURE SALES JUMP 22.5%

Credit Impact of Real Estate Short Sales & Deeds In Lieu

As a listing agent myself, I’d love every agent to show all property addresses on their IDX links! To get real though, let's address a problem that has probably cost you a lot of money, time and aggravation over the years.

I'll preface this by saying that many of the Internet prospects you deal with in your career will likely be good, honest people. However, it seems the inquires generated through Realtor web sites cause even the best, most honest, potential clients, to, either intentionally or unintentionally, waste your time.

As a professional in this industry, your time is the one thing you can't afford to waste. If you run out of money, you can always make more. If you run out of time, all the money in the world won't help you.

So there is a good argument to be made for the notion that time is much more valuable than money.

The impersonal nature of the Internet and ‘instant response’ culture promoted by it can be detrimental to efficient agent time management.

If you have a popular web site, you will notice that a large percent of the inquires requesting property availability, neighborhood/school facts and recent sales data, never contact by phone, or reply back to your emails after you have sent them their requested information.

Actually, with popular sites these time wasters can be a very serous problem. You’ll notice I said ‘can be’ in the preceding sentence. If you follow my suggestions below, the occurrence of this happening through your site will be drastically reduced or eliminated entirely.

Naturally, there will be many who will take exception to my ideas but these same agents are the ones that may show a $750,000 home without even asking one pre-qualification question. Averaging over 700 unique visitors per day to my San Diego real estate site, I know my suggestions really can benefit those of you who implement them. These are not theoretical ideas, but, field tested and proven techniques.

#1. Show the current average home prices for San Diego on the entry page of your site. My data looks like:

California Real Estate Prices

San Diego Average Residential Detached sales price August 2008 -- $512,266(Source:S.D.A.R.)
Calif. median home price - July 08: $350.760(Source: C.A.R.)

Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region July 08:
Santa Barbara So. Coast $940,000(Source: C.A.R.)

Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region July 08:
High Desert $177,330(Source: C.A.R.)

Mortgage rates - week ending 09/18/08
30-yr. fixed: 5.78% Fees/points: 0.6%
15-yr. fixed: 5.35% Fees/points: 0.6%
1-yr. adjustable: 5.03% Fees/points: 0.5%
(Source: Freddie Mac)

This one step dramatically reduces the ’dreamer’ type of email.

#2. All inquiry forms on your site should be set up so that if vital information is omitted, the form will remind the visitor when they try to submit it that the fields need to filled in for the form to work.

What information you want is up to you. Many times, personally, I do not require the phone number. This is because I feel that many may fear unwanted ‘sales’ calls. Plus, after all they are contacting me via the Internet vs. my toll-free phone number!

I do require the following basic information:

A. Full name
B. Address
C. Email address
D. Working with an agent? Yes or No!

Depending on the form, other information will be required. Keep in mind, these people know about you and are requesting your time. If they will NOT provide you their basic personal information, how serious can they really be?

Perhaps, key to saving your valuable time is my last suggestion:

Immediately upon receipt of an inquiry from your site, you or your assistant should reply with a request for some small bit of additional information. If you do not receive a timely reply to your inquiry, why invest any more time on this inquiry?

What should you ask for depends on the type of inquire. I ask for such information as:

Their time frame, area of town they my want, will they be available to preview property, would they consider a condominium, etc.

Proper time management is crucial to any successful business. Management of your Internet inquires will increase your productivity! "Until you value yourself, you won't value your time.

Until you value your time, you will not do anything with It." -M Scott Peck

Bob Schwartz is a San Diego Certified Residential Specialist, broker  co-owner of  a search engine optimization software company  Bob's other real estate sites are: downtown San Diego real estate  San Diego for sale by owner San Diego Little Italy condominiums San Diego real estate blog San Diego real estate agents

One should keep in mind that the larger the market (city/town) and the more popular the keyword (XXXXX real estate, XXXXX real estate broker, XXXXX real estate agent, XXXXX real estate blog) the harder it will be to get a top ten standing.

Now, for San Diego, I could easly work to get Bob Schwartz San Diego agent on the top of the search engines (it already is) but I did not tagret this phrase. Why? One only has so much time, and to put it to it's best use I work on the MOST popular keyword phrases.

After all, a buyer in Chicago, looking to purchase real estate in San Diego is far more likely to type into their browser one of the phrases noted in the above 1st paragraph than my name.

Also, keep in mind, the longer the key word phrase, the easier to get a top ranking, but also much fewer searches. So, if I wanted to impress the masses, I could easly be on page one for a phrase like Sunny San Diego County real estate broker but in would bring me NO real estate business!

Bob Schwartz

San Diego Realtor

In the table below, www.brokerforyou.com looked at selected San Diego neighborhoods that had 10 or more closed sales in August 2008 & August 2007.

*To view the full post, please visit the San Diego real estate blog