Think you can do better than the appraisers you work with now? What standards and certifications are required for meeting state approval? To get an idea, we took a look at the Real Estate Appraiser Licensing Act of 2002,

What were the highest priced listings in Chicago’s various counties from 2008 to the present day? And what did they ultimately sell for? See our infographic below for some

What do luxury homebuyers expect from your marketing efforts? your brokerage? what words resonate with them when reading listing descriptions? See below for the top trends of the affluent, pulled from the Harrison Group Survey and “Rich Buyer, Rich Seller,”

If everything else in the neighborhood is getting seen five times a week and yours only twice a week, that is not necessarily a good thing. In this type of scenario, the seller will often come to the agent

Month to month through the years, what is the average listing price for an average Chicagoland home, and what does it actually sell for? LeapRE gathered data from all six Chicagoland counties and found the average list and sale

How far apart are average list-to-sell prices, and what does that say about the market? Are properties really decreasing their days on market? LeapRE pulled data from the MLS to find the average list price, sales price and days

Forget private funding – the way of the future is crowdfunding, a collective approach to raising funds for both personal and professional activities, where companies and individuals instead seek small donations for their businesses from dozens of contributors from

After years of users struggling with Facebook’s inferior search function, the mighty social media giant has finally launched a new search apparatus: the Graph Search. Infinitely more elegant and detailed than the original search function, the Graph Search promises

What tech tools and training do different brokerages offer agents? We spoke to five tech representatives from five different brokerages: Chris Haran, director of strategic planning and initiatives with Coldwell Banker Jennifer Alter Warden, president of residential sales with

The 10 largest real estate listing sites capture nearly half of all non-mobile Web traffic in a consumer’s online home search, according to data compiled by Experian Marketing Services (formerly Experian Hitwise). The metrics show the percent of traffic

In our analysis of both local and national brokerage websites, we used two primary sources: Alexa.com is a site that provides Web traffic data. We measured the traffic ranks and reaches of several national and local brokerage websites. Hubspot.com is

Your website’s strong content should relate to neighborhoods and communities served. You should have valuable and insightful content that people want to read, because the best way to get people to your site and keep them coming back is

The level of builders’ sentiment remained steady at 47 in January, due in part to an uncertain political agenda in December 2012 that stalled the consecutive increase in builders’ confidence. Contributing factors included ongoing debates about government spending, potential

The annual rate of construction for multifamily buildings increased 23 percent to 330,000 in December 2012, hitting a 4.5-year high. This marks the first time the monthly five-plus rate has been over 300,000 since the housing downturn affected the

1. Give yourself a time audit. Spend the next week documenting every single thing you do in your job. Then, prioritize. If you have an assistant, identify the tasks you can delegate to them. For example, finding leads or