I read an interesting piece this morning on Seth Godin's Blog regarding the state of the real estate market. Here's what he had to say:

All real estate brokers working today have thrived in an environment in which the price of a house increased on a regular basis for fifty years. Fifty years. Of course, it's not just home sellers, it's us, too. Consumers have built their financial lives around this shared belief.

I've spent the last few years fretting about what just happened: Your home as a piggy bank? Not anymore.

The shared belief about real estate might be in danger. The facts changed this month for the first time. The question that those that market real estate have to answer is this: will people treat a bounce in real estate the way that they think about a drop in the stock market (a chance to profit) or will it lead to a long-term reevaluation of what it means to own a house?

It's interesting to note that insurance on a Ferrari isn't as expensive as you think. That's because fixing a million dollar Ferrari doesn't cost nearly a million dollars. It's the serial number that you're buying--the right to sell that car later for a profit.

This next closing paragraph, however, really packs a punch in terms of relevant impact.  As a matter of fact, it's a big part of why we're doing what we're doing here at AgentCasts:

If the "serial number profit motive" disappears from residential real estate, what happens? I think it could be bigger (and worse) than most people imagine. If the marketers in the real estate world understand the challenge they face, they may very well be able to market their (our) way out of it. They're out of practice, though.

What do you think?

Technorati: real estate, real estate marketing, realtor marketing, online real estate, real estate news, seth godin, agentcasts

The Future of Real Estate Marketing blog has supplied some relevant success stories in their post entitled 'Agents Seeing Success with Online Video', which explores the growing potential for agents in using video for their property listings online.  It's good to see user testimonials along these lines, as such reports serve to fuel the growing movement as a whole and establish viability - which is both necessary and inevitable in terms of encouraging widespread adoption.

We know there's quite a bit of 'buzz' along these lines flying around the web right now, but we particularly enjoyed the quotes that their blog post cited from agents who are experiencing amazing results by listing their properties with video on the web. Here are a few:

…I, too, am having phenomenal success with video marketing (in Northern California). Within 18-48 hours, my videos are skyrocketing to PAGE 1 of Google for nearly every keyword search term imaginable. I sometimes “own” 5-6 of the Top 10 spots on PAGE 1! My Realtor clients are very pleased, and I am ecstatic! I’m sold on video marketing!

...Nancy at NancyMarketsYou.com

I upload property videos to about 12 sites right now, and I can pretty much GUARANTEE that the video (usually along with a link back to the agent’s website) will be on the first page of Google in about 2 days. I just checked my town “Nashua New Hampshire real estate” on Google and I have TEN video entries in the top 50 in Google for that search term - a couple were filmed just 3 days ago. Many times I have occupied up to 3 or 4 entries in the top ten for the #1 search phrase for real estate.

...Fred at Nashua Video Tours

Pretty compelling, if we may so so ourselves. We're experiencing the same sort of exponential success with the clients we serve here at agentcasts.com, and as we've said many times before - this is only the beginning (really)!

Technorati: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate video, real estate podcasting, agentcasts, realtor marketing, video podcasting, podcasting news