5 Real Estate News Sources You Must Read

Are you up to date on the latest real estate news? While a lot of agents are knowledgeable and experienced, part of being a excellent real estate agent is also staying on top of the latest industry changes and trends. I can’t tell you how many office meetings I’ve gone to and our manager would say “XYZ happened this week” and a excellent 75% of the agents were clueless not only that it happened, but that it was vital and could potentially affect them and their business.

There’s a lot of reasons why you should stay up to date on what’s going on nationally and locally that affects real estate. For starters, being knowledgeable will help you greatly service your clients better. When you know the latest in mortgages or trends you can answer their questions and help them know everything they read or hear about. It can also help you build trust and credibility. I’d be pretty nervous if an agent told me that commercial property was hot – when in fact not only in the US but internationally as well commercial sales are plunging. Not dropping or declining or being stagnant – PLUNGING. Maybe the media makes things sound a lot worse than they really are – but you still have to be able to address the fears and concerns of your clients. Remember: You are being hired to represent the best interests of your clients. You can’t do this if you are unaware of things happening in the world that can affect their real estate decisions. If you want to live without news and tv and the internet, that’s a wonderful lifestyle more of us probably should practice – but it would also seriously hurt you as an agent.

Another perk to reading the latest in industry trends and happenings? It gives you instant inspiration for what to write about on your real estate blog. It’s simple to hit a dry spell and not blog consistently or regularly. I will admit even I am prone to this once in awhile, and I’m a full time “pro blogger”. The excellent news is, you can take any real estate related article you read, link to it from your site and share your thoughts on it with your readers. It would only take about 15-20 minutes tops. When you are aware of the latest news and can be reactive you can not only say your blog audience but also your Twitter Followers, email marketing lists, and anyone else you network with.

Fortunately, you can stay up to date on real estate news pretty quickly. Most sites have RSS which you can subscribe to, which means you don’t even have to spend a lot of time to do this. Simply subscribe to the feed, organize them in your reader and then just take 5-10 minutes a day to browse the headlines to see if there is anything you need to know about or affects you directly. Below I’ve made a list of my 5 top free sources for real estate news, and I’d like to hear yours as well.

NAR: If you’re not getting news directly from the National Association of Realtors, there’s a excellent chance that you are missing out on vital laws and changes. Here’s a question to poll the agents in your office with: What month is Honest Housing Month? If you don’t know the answer, then you need to start reading regularly asap. They really have two you should follow (and maybe even possibly more) – their regularly updated general real estate news and NAR Press Releases.

Google News: This is a nice source because it aggregates news from most of the top sources around the world. All you need to do is type in your search terms (ie: “real estate” or “houses” or “Houston, Texas” for example) and then scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll see at the bottom they have a section that says “Stay Up to Date on These Results” and a link for subscribing by RSS for real estate news specifically. You can get news straight from the major news networks: New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Fox and others – without having to visit each site individually. You can either click on the news tab at the top of Google’s homepage or go directly to Google News to configure your custom search and feed.

Realty Times: This was one of the first sites I learned about when I was a new real estate agent and has some decent info. Since they’ve started incorporating videos that auto play when you first go to their site which I reckon is annoying. Videos are fantastic thing to have – but I don’t like it when I’m browsing online quietly and happily and they all of a sudden without warning start to play. Maybe there’s a study that shows it is better to do it automatically, but to me it completely turns me off a site. Fortunately, they do have an RSS feed so you can bypass all the annoying stuff on the homepage and get straight to the news.

RISMedia: This site also has some excellent information for agents and brokers. I couldn’t find a subscribe feed link, though they do have an email newsletter you can sign up for. Learn more about RIS Media.

GlobeSt: Globe street has a lot of real estate news that you may not find elsewhere. They also have location specific news if you happen to be in a major US city. Check it Out Here.

I know there are many others and I do check them out once in awhile – but these are my top 5 for the moment on ones to check out at least once a week if not more. Obviously, you shouldn’t spend too much time reading the news, since that can greatly reduce your productivity – but when you are at an open house or on floor time, reading the news could be one of the best things you can do.