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Cuccinelli and McAuliffe to make joint Q&A appearance for Realtors
Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Here they areVirginia’s two major gubernatorial candidates — Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe — will make a joint appearance just for Virginia Realtors on June 17. Yes, you’re invited. And yes, it’s free.

Come listen to each of the candidates attempt to convince the crowd that he would be the best choice for Realtors. Ask pointed questions. Make ‘em sweat. And show them that Realtors are involved.

Here are the details:

Realtor.com to offer enhanced commercial listings
Friday, May 17, 2013

Move, Inc., which runs Realtor.com for NAR, will begin offering "enhanced commercial search functionality" on the site later this year.

Working with commercial-real estate data provider Xceligent — which owns CommercialSearch.com — the site will begin to offer "amplified commercial functionality" including

hundreds of thousands of commercial listings Xceligent has aggregated into CommercialSearch from multiple sources including: its fully-researched markets, hundreds of MLSs, CIEs (Commercial Information Exchanges) of every market size, and the majority of the top 50 companies who provide commercial listings in the country.

Realtors make more — 25 percent more in 2012, says NAR
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Congrats on the raise.

According to NAR’s 2013 Member Profile, Realtors are doing much better this year — earning 24.6 percent more in 2012 than they did in 2011. (That’s two years in a row that Realtor’s income rose.)

Essentially, fewer Realtors + more total sales = more money for each Realtor.

Here are some specifics to mull over:

In 2012…

Governor signs transportation bill
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Quipping that "This may technically be transportation legislation, but at the end of the day, it’s a jobs bill," Governor Bob McDonnell signed Virginia’s new transportation funding bill — a bill Virginia Realtors helped pass.

The new law eliminates the 17.5-cent per-gallon gasoline tax (at the pump), replacing it with a 3.5 percent tax (at the distributor). This helps compensate for higher-mileage vehicles, which use less gasoline but still put the same wear and tear on roadways.

Good news: DPOR updates its license transfer process
Thursday, May 9, 2013

Earlier today, all Virginia brokers received the following notification:

NY to real estate agents: No, you can’t have that title
Wednesday, May 8, 2013

No matter how many time you've run Shado-pan Monastery, you can't have this on your business card.The New York Department of State recently told real estate agents there that — independent contractors or not — you can’t give yourself some highfaluti

Fed-induced housing bubble? Flip a coin
Wednesday, May 8, 2013

You may notice that we don’t run certain types of stories very often here. For example, "Experts predict…" pieces. Why not? Because expert predictions about economic matters are nonsense.

Jon Stewart on MERS
Wednesday, May 8, 2013

It took a while, but Jon Stewart finally got around to doing a segment on the Mortgage Electronic Registration system.

Why the "R" is so much more than a logo
Tuesday, May 7, 2013

VAR launched two REALTOR® image commercials today.  The spots have received great feedback so far. We are testing them first in the Richmond market and hope to continue to air around the state in the near future.

One is focused on the REALTOR® pledge and the other on what a REALTOR® can do for the consumer, both resulting in the Realtor logo/brand being a promise.  So… look for the R…look for the REALTOR® promise.

Check them out (bet you’ll recognize some faces too) and let us know what you think!

Housing and employment: a chart that makes it clear
Monday, May 6, 2013

We’ve been saying for a long time how important the housing industry is to the economy — how every home sold has a major and positive effect on industries far and wide.

Well here’s a great chart that makes that point crystal clear. It shows housing starts vs. the unemployment rate.

Unemployment began to skyrocket around January 2007, peaking about two and a half years later. Since mid-January 2009, though, it’s been going down.

Meanwhile, one-unit housing starts peaked around January 2006, plummeted for about three years, and only started rising again in early 2009 with the rest of the economy.