Louisiana REALTORS® staff and officers have been working hard to restore normal operations. LR has secured a new association office, 5555 Hilton Avenue, Suite 320 in Baton Rouge. Move in should be substantially complete by Friday. A committee has been formed to assess the long term facility needs of the association.

Phone lines will be fully operational by the end of the week and the phone numbers, (225) 923-2210 and 1-800-266-8538, and fax line (225) 926-6538 remain unchanged. Email and regular mail are checked regularly and education courses have continued as scheduled. We again apologize for any disruption of services or inconvenience to the members and expect to be fully operational by Friday, May 24, 2013. In the meantime, any issues or concerns can be addressed via email to Malcolm Young, CEO.

The shape of homeownership and housing markets has changed dramatically over time and will continue to change in the face of new housing opportunities and challenges. That’s according to panelists at the “Challenges and Opportunities in Housing and Homeownership” session last week during the Realtors® 2013 Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo.

During the session, academics from DePaul University, George Mason University, University of North Carolina and the University of Maryland presented various research and data illustrating the impact of shifting demographics, new mobility patterns and an uncertain interest rate environment on future housing prices, availability and affordability. Funding for some of the research was provided by the REALTOR® University Center for Real Estate Studies.

“The residential mobility rate in the U.S. has been falling steadily since the 1990s, when it was approximately 20 percent, to its current level of 12 percent,” said National Association of Realtors® Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “The decline is unwelcome news since it may imply a reduction in economic mobility. Mobility is currently being impacted by the lack of housing inventory since fewer homes are available. In the future, proposed regulations requiring larger down payments could also significantly reduce mobility since fewer homeowners may be able to afford a home.”

Lisa Sturtevant from George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis said recent trends in residential mobility are most likely the result of changes in the age distribution of the population. She said the two largest segments of the population – baby boomers and millennials – are delaying many major lifecycle events that have been traditional for their respective life stages, like marriage, children and retirement. That also means they are not moving as much as members of previous generations at the same life stages, which could be dragging down the overall residential mobility rate. To read the full article, click here.

Source: REALTOR.org

Good news: You can be trained to get better at reading your clients’ emotions.

A growing body of psychological research is pointing to plenty of reasons why you should want to: Salespeople with high emotional intelligence get better results and have more loyal customers. Being able to recognize their emotions can help you adjust your own emotional response and build better rapport.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to interpret and read your clients’ emotions, and then use that emotional information to adapt within a selling situation. It can help you make your clients feel more valued, improve your lead-conversion rates, build stronger personal connections, and even make you look more intelligent in your customers’ eyes, according to research conducted by Chris Blocker, an assistant professor of marketing at Baylor University.

Emotional intelligence has been getting more attention in recent years, particularly in terms of how it helps in selling situations. Major companies — like Coca Cola and American Express — are even investing in training its salespeople on EI.

Yet, too often, real estate professionals and customers aren’t on the same “emotional wavelength.” In fact, one study showed that 46 percent of real estate agent and client relationships have weak emotional communication, and only 26 percent operate on the same emotional wavelength, To read the full article in REALTOR® magazine, click here.

Source: REALTORMag