This makes me mad every time I see it. Either the National Association of Business Economists is full of people with no real business experience or fools. This is a headline from a major online Real Estate publication, “Economists See Credit Problems as Bigger Threat than Terrorism.”

I know they were all alive just seven years ago when terrorism cost the lives of three thousand American citizens. That headline goes beyond sensationalism. It is rude and insensitive.

The article goes on to say that one in three members of the NABE, “…Said the housing boom can be described as a ‘serious National bubble.’ Then later in the article three in four said they would “buy a house today if they intended to use it as their primary residence.”

Would someone please tell these academic fools that housing is local in nature? While many major markets suffered and are suffering from the overzealousness of investors followed by the overzealousness of foolish subprime lenders, there are many markets that are healthy and many more that are suffering a softening but nothing close to a collapse.

These gloom and doom headlines supported by a minority of questionable economist opinions feed the problem they are describing. While the facts support the opposite conclusion. Even the economists own research supports the opposite conclusion.

In the same article, “Asked to look five years into the future, 42 percent expected US home prices to remain flat, 41 percent said prices would rise.” Then how did 34 percent of the same group call this a bubble that is fed by a threat bigger than terrorism.

Let’s give credit where it is due. “59 percent still say there is no national housing bubble, only significant local bubbles. Another 8 percent say there’s no bubble at all and that the market is functioning correctly.”

Hooray for those groups. They got it right. There are some local bubbles where there were hundreds and thousands of development parcels and homes developed and built in anticipation of future sales and the sales that were feeding that demand was investor speculation (Boise and Sarasota to name two).

In late 2005 and through 2006 the investors realized that the boom was being fed by their own demand so withdrew. This left tremendous inventory in some cities or areas of cities.

Unfortunately, in 2006 this was immediately followed by the secondary market lenders realizing that they had allowed a foolish combination of underwriting standards for the previous five years or so. They were buying loans that allowed buyers to have both, little or no down payment and marginal credit. How this happened (and who should be prosecuted for it) is a mystery that will likely remain unsolved.

The result was in some communities around the country, particularly where there were high priced homes and with less sophisticated buyers; many of these mortgages were used to purchase homes. That created additional pockets of excess inventory which stalled prices in those areas.

Now the majority of lenders loaning jumbo loans, over 417,000 have stopped funding these high-end loans for some period of time. This will further increase inventory and dampen prices in some areas.

Notice the language, dampen prices in some areas. Most of the country is experiencing a normal buyer’s market that normally follows a long healthy seller’s market.

The latter group of economists put it perfectly. The market is functioning correctly. In 1986 after two to three years of a soft buyer’s market not unlike what we are experiencing now (although it was driven by different causes) there was a long strong period of a healthy seller’s market with steady appreciation.

There was a momentary softer buyer’s market around the Gulf War in 1991 (although not caused by it) followed by over a decade of a healthy buyers market that lasted until 2006. If we learn from history strong seller’s markets last longer than softer buyer’s markets.

So again the economists got this right. The same article said 58% of the economists predicted a ‘meaningful’ recovery in U.S. housing markets before the second half of 2008 or in the second half of 2008. The majority of the other 42% predicted the recovery in 2009.

This is completely consistent with history. This two or three years of soft buyer’s market with slightly flattening prices will likely be followed by five or more years of a healthy seller’s market with equally healthy price appreciation.

REALTORs® all learned in their first Real Estate class that the market is driven by supply and demand. So as long as there is an increasing population of people with reasonable or better incomes, the demand will keep the market healthy.

Add to that the fact that the Federal government repeatedly states that they realize that the Real Estate market is critical to the health of the economy and they will do whatever is necessary to keep mortgage money available.

It all adds up to a principal residence continuing to be the safest and smartest investment for a person living in this fabulous nation. (Just be careful of areas that have experienced rapid appreciation for more than twenty-four months. There could be a windfall or just a fall looming.)

If you are associated with Real Estate, please separate the sensationalism from the truth. If you are in most communities in this country everything, is pretty normal. Prices are appreciating a little slower but still appreciating. Houses are on the market longer. Buyers are fussier. Yes, it is tougher to sell Real Estate. But you still have one of the best jobs in the world with more personal freedom and opportunity for success than any other business person or professional on earth.

If you are in one of those tougher markets, my heart is with you. You do have an uphill battle for another twelve to twenty four months. You have my strongest wish that you can survive and succeed through this. If not, come back to the business in a couple of years. I feel comfortable promising you that the good times will roll again in the not too distant future.

I love this business for what it provides to our society, the people in it, and the strong bright professionals that make me proud to be a part of it.

Rich Levin is a nationally known coach, educator and speaker. Rich has been in the Real Estate Business for over 30 years with the last 15 dedicated to coaching and speaking. His specialty is working with productive Real Estate Agents and Brokers taking them to their highest levels of production and performance in their business and in their lives. He is a regular contributor to various Real Estate publications and has spoken at events from small offices to NAR convention as well as coaching top Agents from across the country. He is CPBA and e-PRO certified.

Contact him at 585-244-2700 or visit http://www.RichLevin.com. Ask Rich a question at http://www.AskCoachRichLevin.com

In tough economic times, it is a natural for a Real Estate Agent’s attitude to waver. This market leads to confusion and lost focus. Should you make more calls, do more marketing, hold open houses, finally get to that project? What if none of those things work? Should you stay in the business? Can you afford to? These thoughts and the feelings they generate are a far more serious issue than the market and the problems that arise from the market.

You create what you focus on. Your focus creates your life. There are always opportunities in Real Estate. The Agents who looks for the opportunities find them, explore them and find ways to win. The Agents that look at the problems find those explore them and only see ways that limit their opportunities.

Focus creates feelings. The quality of our life is dictated by what we feel at any given moment. Focus creates your attitude. Do you control what you focus on and what you think about? Or do you allow outside influences, circumstances, and others reactions to dictate your focus which means that you, unnecessarily, give up control over your attitude and emotional state allowing outside influences to control the quality of your life?

Your Focus is the Key

Think about this. If a hostage is blindfolded, gagged and bound, in silence, what do they have left? All they have left are their thoughts and feelings. Through that experience, those thoughts and feelings completely dictate their quality of life. And how they manage those thoughts and feelings through that experience will largely dictate the quality of their life after it.

What you think about, you bring about. By managing what you think about, what you focus on you have power over your thoughts and their feelings.

This is true every day and every moment of your life. How you manage your focus will dictate your attitude. You can focus on things that make you strong and clear or focus on things that will diminish your quality of life.

Louise L. Hay, Author of “You Can Heal Your Life” says, “What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. Put another way, our subconscious mind accepts whatever we choose to believe. Then it reflects our beliefs in our lives. Many of us have foolish ideas about who we are. When we are very little, we learn how to feel about ourselves and about life by the reactions of the adults around us. When we grow up we have a tendency to re-recreate the emotional environment of our early home life.”

Our subconscious mind accepts whatever we choose to believe. You manage your attitude and your life by choosing the thoughts you focus on and hold in your mind. Choose empowering thoughts and you control the life you live. Allow disempowering thoughts and you lose control.

Focus Leads to Feelings

Focus leads to feelings. Control the focus and the feeling follows. You hear good news; good thoughts and good feelings follow. You hear bad news and bad feelings follow. Feelings follow focus, so control what you focus on and you control your feelings.

Focus, Meaning, and Physiology

Anthony Robbins, the famous motivator refers to this as your “state,” your emotional state of being. He teaches millions of people all over the world to control their state by controlling “what you focus on and the meaning you give it.” He adds a very important dimension to this. He adds physiology, which is what you do with your body.

Robbins says, “The source of all emotion is a pattern of physiology, how you use your physical body, focus, whatever you focus on, and meaning, words we put to an experience. Change any of these, physiology, focus or meaning and your (emotional) state changes.”

Most people do not make an effort to control their emotional state. Most people live with emotional states that disturb them. And they make no effort to change it, perhaps because they do not know that it is possible to change from sadness, frustration, fatigue and other negative emotional states to positive ones by changing focus, meaning and physiology.

The Secret

A popular DVD/book called “The Secret” focuses on the Law of Attraction. The narrator says, “By the images we hold in our mind we get and become what we think about most. What we think about we bring about.”

That is exactly what controls our attitude. What we think about (focus on) dictates the attitude we bring about.

It’s important to acknowledge that we cannot control the thoughts that pop into our minds. However, we can control whether we hold onto a thought, let it go, or replace it. We do not have to be controlled by the thought that popped into our mind but we are controlled by the thoughts we choose to hold there or allow to remain on our mind.

Habits and Practices

All this contributes to the way you create your attitude of success. The obvious goal is to fill your mind with the thoughts of what you desire. Fill your mind with belief in your confidence to live the life you desire, a life you love. And create the habit of catching negative, disempowering thoughts and replace them with positive, empowering thoughts. Here’s how.

You break an age old habit that is taught and reinforced by nearly everyone in our society. The age old habit is to focus on what to do. You go to bed each night and/or wake each morning and you shape your day around what you have to do. That focus will nearly always be frustrating. You may be asking what else is there to focus on?

The answer is to focus on what you want (not what you want to do), what you want to accomplish? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to create? Then focus on why you want those things. Once you are clear on what you want and why; your to do list becomes the vehicle instead of the goal, itself. Break the habit of the letting your day be dictated by your to do list. Instead let your day be led by what you want to achieve and why you want it. Your days will be more productive, more satisfying and more fulfilling.

Daily Affirmations and the What/Why Focus

Daily affirmations are the method to fill your mind with the exact thoughts that will empower your day. One of your daily affirmations may be remembering what you want and why you want it. For some, daily prayer is their focus and one set of thoughts that fill your mind. Other universal affirmations are; “I am completely capable.” “Money flows to me quickly and easily.” “I like myself unconditionally.” “I am loved and lovable.” “I deserve tremendous success.” Others may be specific; “I am earning two hundred thousand dollars this year.” “I am the number one Agent in my company.” “Seller’s are eager to hire me.” Or personal, “My family comes first.” “My work serves my life, not my life serving my work.”

As you repeat each affirmation or focus on what you want and why, take a moment to hold the image in your mind. Believe it is already yours. Hold the image long enough to actually feel that it is already accomplished. Experience that feeling. This is the actual practice of focusing on what you want, holding it in your mind and adding meaning to it. Results will come naturally. You don’t need to know how you will do a thing. Replace doubt with faith. Then your mind and heart are free to creatively come up with the best methods. Results naturally follow.

Physiology Again

As mentioned earlier, physiology is a main factor in your emotional state. As you experience your daily affirmations stand tall. If you feel like raising your arms toward the sky and letting the power of your faith flow through to you, raise them, smile and feel the glory of your success.

Physiology is a key to shifting your attitude. If you find your mind getting negative during the day, change your physiology. Go for a walk. Eat a piece of your favorite fruit. Simply stand up; clap your hands and begin thinking of your success; jump up and down, pump your fist. Feel the power of your successful future.

Physiology also includes exercise, diet, and sleep. When I see my thoughts go awry, or when I wake up and question my abilities or at some point in the day I find my mind losing belief in myself, the first questions I ask are, “Did I get enough sleep? Have I been exercising regularly? Did I miss meals or eat too much junk food recently?” Most often one of those is the reason. I commit to address the problem. That makes it easy to use positive physiology, focus and meaning to shift my attitude to positive.

In Summary

The most prescribed drugs in the United States are anti-depressants. Clinical depression is a debilitating disorder. At the same time most people are pretty normal when it comes to their attitude. It is perfectly normal to suffer from mild non-clinical depression. Many of my coaching clients who were in that state are now living happier more successful lives simply by employing the strategies above.

Reread the strategies above. Look at your goals, what you want and why. Set goals, or set new specific ones. Repeat your daily affirmations or create new ones. Start every day and focus each day on what you want and why. Make that a habit. Add physiology to your affirmations and change your physiology when your thoughts begin to sour. Look at your diet, exercise, and sleep habits. Make one small improvement. See its positive effect. Then make another.

With practice attitude shifts take no time at all. They happen in an instant. Make your next instant a powerful and positive one because you control it.

Rich Levin is a coach and speaker whose focus is teaching Agents to understand and control their business. Through that understanding achieve exceptional happiness and wealth in their life. Take control of your business, register for a 2009 Strategy Session.

Rich conducts a 15 minute webinar that will start your day with focus 1^st Fifteen Training Webinar every week day morning. Rich is President of Rich Levin’s Success Corps Inc. Contact him at 585-244-2700 or rich@richlevin.com.

There are four distinct skills you need to develop to take full advantage of this tremendous opportunity with buyer leads.

1. Contact the leads.

2. Convert the leads into appointments

3. Develop and conduct a winning buyer presentation.

4. Stay in touch with the leads until they buy from you or you drop them

First you need the habit and discipline of contacting enough of the leads that you generate to reach your goals. Most Agents generate enough leads to reach their next level of production. What they lack is the habit of following up on all the leads they generate.

When you get a lead, call it that minute. If you can’t that minute and most of the time you can. But if you really can’t, call it at the next ten minute break you have in your day.

Now if you are really disciplined and most Agents aren’t, you could set aside time to make lead follow up calls. Most Agents that try this, don’t make the calls immediately and don’t honor the lead follow up times and therefore simply lose lots of leads for lack of follow up. So, I suggest you develop your discipline to call back immediately. If it is an e-mail respond immediately. The point is to make the contact.

The second skill is your ability to convert the lead into an appointment with you. For most Agents, for all but the highest producers this is the ability to convert the lead into an appointment to meet with you in what we call a buyer appointment.

This conversion skill includes the language, the scripts and the approach to get the person wanting to meet with you. You make them see that they will buy a better home for a great price if they meet with you and learn what you have to teach rather than continuing on their own.

When you contact the lead do two things. First give the person the information they want. Second ask them probing question that helps them and you.

Like this, “The price on that property is $249,900. Is that the price range you are in or are you looking higher or lower than that?” Give the information and ask a relevant question.

Or, “That house is 1400 square feet with three bedrooms and one bath. What size home are you looking for?”  Give the information and ask a relevant question.

Continue this process until you feel comfortable with asking for an appointment to proceed.

Like this, “Great, that sounds really doable. Let’s do this. Let’s get together and see if we can find just what you are looking for. I don’t bite I promise. If we hit it off I’d love to help you find the best place to live. If we don’t I promise you’ll at least get some good information and we’ll shake hands and go our separate ways. Honestly, I like the sound of you guys, I think we may hit it off. What evening this week are you free?”

The third skill is the ability to conduct a buyer appointment that educates the buyer in the process, creates tremendous confidence in you and your ability to help them find and purchase the best possible property.

Show them how you are watching out for them and ensuring their success as you describe their process of buying and also so they know what to expect from you. You describe things they probably hadn’t thought of. At the same time you educate them and you distinguish yourself as the type of Agent they want working for them.  Continually ask for their agreement as you go through the process and describe your function.

Like this, “I will pull up everything in the MLS that is even close to your desired home. I have the ability to search over 100 different criteria so I will be completely thorough. How does that sound to you?”

By effectively doing this step

• They will buy faster

• They will be more loyal

• They will be more confident in your advice

• They will be more forgiving if something goes wrong

• They will send you referrals

The fourth and final skill to turn the maximum number of leads to sales is your habit of what we call lead retention. Lead retention means your system of recording the lead’s information and prompting yourself to stay in contact with them until they buy or you choose to drop them.

The key here is to have a simple contact management system. The simplest contact management system is to record each lead on an index card or calendar then prompt yourself to call them.

The most efficient method is to use a contact management system like Top Producer, Microsoft Access, Outlook, ACT or some other system that contains both a database of the information on the lead and a calendar to prompt you to call them.

For most Agents, doubling your business or at least adding fifty percent to your business is possible with this skill. Begin to retain your leads, staying in touch with them by phone in addition to your auto notification by e-mails. Use a contact management system to retain your relationship with the maximum number of leads and your next level will occur.

Of course we all know that you can have these four skills and still not get the job done if you don’t put the skills to use.

If you want to increase your effectiveness at these skills and never get to it and continue to suffer lost leads, disloyal buyers, and continuous disappointment then call me for a free strategic business planning session and we can discuss how to have you start implementing these skills immediately.

Rich Levin is a National Real Estate Authority with over 30 years experience; the last 15 dedicated to coaching and speaking. His specialty is in raising Agent Production while improving quality of life. He has spoken in 38 States at events from small offices to the NAR convention.

Join Rich every morning at 8:45 AM for a free webinar that will start your day with focus and motivation. Rich share a few minutes of his best work on mental and emotional fitness, on every skill in your career from prospecting and presenting to marketing, negotiating, building a team and more. Be careful.  1st Fifteen Webinars are addictive. Once you start participating you will want more. No problem, he is there every weekday at 8:45 am Eastern.  You simply register at www.1stFifteen.com.”