This is our first weekly linkage to some articles that I found particularly interesting. Enjoy!

The last seven days in Real Estate - (Rain City Guide)
People Have To Live Somewhere - (The Real Estate Bloggers)
Slow News Cycle = More Housing Coverage = More Confusion - (Matrix)
The Natural Cycle of a Real Estate Market - (Blueroof)
Upgrading Apartments? Sell First! - (Urbandigs)

-Tony Floriani

Here at Homethinking.com, we provide fast and easy access to information and reviews about Realtors, but once you’ve narrowed down your search, you still may have some questions. From a Marketwatch report, The Real Estate Blogger has put together a list of the most important things to ask your Realtor before you hire them. And if you’re not satisfied with the answers, not to worry. Homethinking has over a million other Realtors for you to check out!

- Tony Floriani

A few days ago I wrote about the incredibly low vacancy rates here in New York and what they are doing to the real estate and renters’ markets in the city. Today, both Curbed and The Real Estate Bloggers caught wind of a similar story with some more statistics and some juicy quotes for you to chew on. Enjoy!

-Tony Floriani

Manhattan real estate broker Cheryl Eisen’s video on YouTube, since removed so no link, has sparked controversy in regards to the appropriateness of real estate agents’ selling tactics. Many who have viewed the video have commented on either how clever she is to come up with such a creative strategy or how inappropriate the video is to show her marketing the property with somewhat provocative mannerism. Either way, she was able to generate over 1700 views for her video in three days and be featured in many popular national real estate blogs and newspapers.

Marketing real estate through videos has become increasingly popular on the internet today. As broadband becomes ubiquitous, finding creative nontraditional ways to sell real estate has become the next best thing. These real estate videos in the market today range from the amateur, to the semi-professional, to the very professional. A simple search on YouTube regarding the term house for sale will yield a variety of videos that are screaming to be noticed. If you’re willing to go the extra mile, you can even take your video onto TV via companies like SpotRunner which allows local advertisers to take advantage of local TV advertising. They offer 30 second spots on cable TV for reasonable prices.

Real estate is after all about emotion as much as it is about numbers. General real estate listings and photos of a particular home just doesn’t compare to an online video full of vivid images and crip sounds of the actual home. You’ll find Inman Stories’s range of listings and brokers to be extremely helpful. And who knows, maybe one day your home may become a movie star.

As you might expect, data holds a special place in our heart. And so do others who hold a similar opinion like Nate Sumner, a real estate broker in Marin County of California, just outside of San Francisco.

Nate has created an index that looks at the number of sales (actual and pending) that occured in the past 30 days and divides that number by the number of homes available for sale at that point in time.

In effect, the index looks at whether inventory on a market is drying up or flooding in. A high number means there are more buyers than people willing to sell and vice versa, a low number means there are more sellers than buyers (oversimplifying things).

As you might expect, the fourth quarter in Marin county represented a tipping point where the favored negotiating position went from the seller to the buyer.

Nate does a great job on the cities in Marin and we might extend his great efforts in the coming weeks and start to look at other communities in California. If you’d like us to take a look at yours, just comment on this post.

There are many more factors that help drive the final sales price than engaging the best realtor. CNN Money had a good article over the weekend describing four items besides Homethinking a home owner might explore in a slowing real estate market.

One of those, home staging, featured Debra Gould of SixElements. Debra runs a fascinating business that helps clients achieve the maximum sales price by decorating and co-ordinating the design of a house about to be listed for sale. Debra says that home staging can add tens of thousands of dollars to the final sales price for an investment of far less. And no doubt the demand for her services is sure to rise as selling a home becomes increasingly difficult.

Debra is also now helping others start their own home staging businesses, and has begun compiling a directory of home stagers.

If you’re considering selling your property, or even feel the entrepreneurial spirit within, be sure to check out her site.