News You Can Use – 06/25/2012

Home Starts, Permits Hint at Housing Revival

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has reported news that: “U.S. builders started work on more single-family homes in May and requested the most permits to build homes and apartments in 3 1/2 years. The increase suggests the housing market is slowly recovering even as other areas of the economy have weakened. …And builders are more optimistic about the next 12 months. They requested more permits to build homes, a gauge of future construction. Permits increased to a seasonally adjusted rate of 780,000 – the most since September 2008.”

Young Homebuyers are Entering the Housing Market with a Mixture of Optimism and Realism

The Star Tribune recently wrote a case study piece about the current state of young adults in the process of purchasing homes. Among their notes: “Buoyed by record low interest rates and affordable home prices, many young buyers have excitedly snapped up starter homes with big yards, garages and tons of storage space for sometimes nearly the same monthly mortgage payment as their apartment rent.”

25 Awesome Email Marketing Tips [Webinar Recording + Slides]

When we originally brought this one to your attention a couple weeks back, we noted that the webinar was scheduled for last Thursday. If you missed it, you can now watch it online or just click through the slides if you don’t have the time.

5 Power uses of Evernote for Real Estate

If you attended the April Tech Tour, you heard about what a great app Evernote is, synchronizing notes on all of your devices. Last week, Inman posted an article by a Phoenix agent/business development VP who admits that it has revolutionized how he does business. The agent describes Evernote as “my one go to tool to handle my complete transaction management, task management and productivity center.”

5 Ways Small Businesses Get Social Media Wrong

While the article is written generically about business, there are solid warnings for real estate agents who are just starting out in social media and don’t want to risk offending current clients and potential leads.

Johan Larsson via Compfight