Recently I had posted a few ads and noticed that I had was not receiving any response from the ads – I normally do. So I was wondering what was going on with the ads and did a little research. When I did a search for my ad I could not find, yet my craigslist account said the ads were “live”.

Apparently what happens is that when you create an ad and click post, to make your ad go “Live” you are not aware and are given no indication that your ad is going to be ghosted by craigslist. You go through the normal posting process like you normally would for posting any ad. In fact you are given an URL as if it did go live, but it never shows up on the main page of Craigslist. The problem is that under certain circumstances the staff at Craigslist and/or the algorithm they have created, decides that there is something wrong with your post and your post will never go really live.

I have read several post, blogs, and forums and apparently very few people if any know how to get around the craigslist ghosting problem. Sure there are a few people out that claim to have ways to beat the ghosting system, but they want to charge. The best I could find were some tips on how to avoid your craigslist ads from being ghosted, and here they are:

• Don’t post more that once a week.
• Use a Proxy (changes your IP address location) and/or use several accounts with each different IP address.
• Change the wording on each post.
• Don’t Use HTML and/or links
• Don’t use images hosted on certain site….(don’t know which)

Most of these tips really made no sense to me, but they were what I found.

My suggestion – Craigslist became popular because were able to post free ads, and search the ads that were posted – So, post your ads elsewhere. Here are a few other Classifieds website that are still free:

• BackPage.com
• ClassifedSection.net
• ClassifiedAds.com

You can post of thesee too, but I had problems with them also filtering ads:

• EbayClassifieds.com
• Oodle.com

And then there are obviously several other niche classifieds websites depending on what kind of ads you are looking to post – but you will have to find those by searching for your niche.

I know everyone likes craigslist due to it’s traffic, but like many others, they got big and forgot where they came from – they are now killing the people who made them who they are today – the same people who can bring them back down.

So my suggestion, if your are having problems with Craigslist Ghosting – use another classifieds website!

Basically the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a homeowner who had purchased a home in foreclosure did not have legal ownership of the property and therefore could not resell it. The reason: The bank failed to properly process the title when foreclosing on it.

This decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court could casts a cloud over the legal ownership of any properties in Massachusetts (and could filter elsewhere) where banks didn’t properly convey title when foreclosing. It really all comes down to the broken chains of title on foreclosures. If you don’t know what that is, well, that the reason why you have title insurance, and a attorney or title company that ensure you are receiving a “clear title” when buying a home. Without a clear title, the owner of the property could not be the rightful owner…

The MA court’s ruling follows an earlier court decision that voided a foreclosure after banks couldn’t prove they owned the mortgage when it started the process.

The most recent “ruling took that decision one step further by finding that sales of bank-owned properties with clouded title were invalid, even after an unwitting third-party buyer later bought the bank-owned property,” The Wall Street Journal notes.

This is going to get really hairy, and not just in Massachusetts, this court ruling could be used as a guideline for other states, and cause a lot of homeowners to either loose the property or make a claim in the title insurance – but what if the title insurer closes down? Remember back a little while ago when the Title Insurance companies did not want to insure any Bank Owned Properties that was for sale?

I have no idea how this is going to play out in the real estate market, but I do know one thing, this Massachusetts court ruling on Bank Owned Properties is going to definitely impact the Banks, REO’s and Real Estate in general….

I looked up 20 properties that looked like good candidates for the client, since I like to do things old school, I call! I don’t really care what show assist says, I call. I want to talk to you, make sure we are not wasting our time and you have 10 offers, or be surprised when we get to the property. Can you believe that out of the 20 properties I called on only one (1) was actually available!

Most of the properties were already under contract, could not be seen due to having problems with a tenant, the property was off the market, or some other lame reason. To me that is not just disrespectful to other agents, but unethical.

I say unethical because I know what these realtors were doing, they are using these properties as marketing techniques. Since the properties are listed on the MLS they are looking to receive calls from buyers for the properties, properties that are no longer available!

The client was looking for a property under 60k. The Agents left these “off the market” properties on the MLS so that they can show on all the IDX websites including realtor.com, and get leads.

I think those Realtors are disrespecting the MLS – one of our greatest tools. Why would you have to resort to these cheap tactics to get clients, all they are doing is ruining the MLS, and the little respect clients have for realtors.

I say they are causing clients to loose respect because now when they call another Broker that person has to tell that client that those properties are not available – that sounds just like a used car salesman! We are supposed to be professionals, not con-artists!

I was kind enough to let these agents know that if the property is off the market they should change the listing status to “off the market” or “temporarily off the market”. I mean, does that not make sense? Why would they cause extra work for other agents and cause clients to loose trust in our profession?

Point of the story, if you need clients work for them, and earn them through your professionalism and hard work – not unethical practices! Please respect the MLS, your profession and our Clients.

The unsuspecting renter contacts the fake owner, and since too often the offer is a great deal (remember if it’s too good to be true, it normally is) the renter gives the scammer a deposit check.

Now there are several variations of this rental home scam:

In some cases the scammer just walks away with the security deposit from several victimized renters, and in other case the scammer actually rents the property to the renter and collects rent until the scam is discovered.

Vacant home and Foreclosed properties are the prime candidates for this rental scam. In some cases it has even been reported that the scammer cleans up the house, and does some landscaping – or provides a discount for the renter to do the clean up.

Police and Realtors are encouraging renters to work with a licensed real estate professional or property management firms to make sure they’re renting a property that is indeed for rent by a legitimate landlord.

Because real estate is considered a niche market, you should generate inbound links from other real estate related websites. This will increase your ranking for keywords oriented around “Real Estate”, and ultimately that is the major keyword we are all trying to gain results from.

So how do you SEO your real estate website to gain better results? It’s really not that complicated, make sure your home page is optimized with the keywords that you would like to attract results from. For example, use keywords for your local demographical area such as the city and county.

One of the best things to do is to write articles/blogs about your local area, city, communities, or HOA’s. Being that your are linking back to your website from a page that contains information on that area, it should increase the results of your real estate website’s search engine optimization.

Now let’s talk about how to write that content

Whether you are writing content for your website, or submit an article on this website, your content should be optimized to match some of the criteria set by search engines. They are not difficult, and the specifics change constantly, but we are going to address the basics of writing search engine optimized content.

The content you write should have one main keyword, and another one or two secondary keywords.

The title of your post/article should include the main “keyword” of your post. The title should be no longer that 50 characters.

The Content/Body should contain the main keyword within the first 15-20 words of the body. The main keyword, along with the secondary keywords should be scattered in the body and should take up 2/3% of the entire content of the article. The article should contain the main keyword within the last 30 words.

The Tags should be just your keywords, with a maximum of 5 tags per post.

The tags will be converted to the meta keywords when you post on this website and normally the first 120 characters will become the meta description on the header of the page. If you are posting on your own website then you would have to include these manually.

If you have any questions about Search Engine Optimization, please leave us a comment below.

Last year, Brazilian buyers accounted for more than half of all the properties selling for $500,000 or more in downtown Miami, Forbes said, and almost 50 percent of sales over a million dollars on Miami Beach.

Strong Brazilian currency against the dollar means that Brazilians can spend less to acquire great waterfront properties.

“They are getting low interest rates of around 4 percent a year, which is better than they would get in Brazil to buy a house, and many are putting down large down payments, so they can bargain for lower prices with the seller,” said Fernando Bergallo, a forex broker at TOV Corretora in São Paulo.

“Miami is simply cheaper for Brazilians, especially when you consider the cost-benefit of a property in an American city that has all the infrastructure you can imagine, in a secure neighborhood and the properties themselves are often better than the structures they’re getting in Brazil,” he said.

“Our goal is to put an end to unlawful housing discrimination,” said John Trasviña, HUD Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. “We have made progress in reducing housing discrimination, but more work needs to be done to make ‘fair housing … part of the American way of life,’ as President Johnson said in 1968 when he signed the Fair Housing Act into law.”

More than 10,000 fair housing discrimination complaints were filed in fiscal year 2010, according to the report. Of the 10,155 complaints filed with HUD and its Fair Housing Assistance Program partner agencies, 48 percent alleged disability discrimination, 34 percent claimed discrimination based on race, and 15 percent alleged discrimination based on family status.

In fiscal year 2010, HUD and its partner agencies processed 4,494 new complaints within 100 days – 328 more than in 2009 and 583 more than in 2008. HUD also proactively pursued its own investigations.

In addition, the report says that HUD placed greater emphasis on the local agencies that receive HUD funding to enforce the Fair Housing Act and create more housing opportunities for minorities, families with children, and people with disabilities.

Going forward, HUD says it will continue to reach out to groups that have historically lacked sufficient protection from housing discrimination, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons. HUD plans to issue a rule that clarifies the term “family” – when used in HUD programs – to include all eligible LGBT couples and individuals.

The Department is also expanding its education and outreach to immigrants.

A copy of HUD’s Annual State of Fair Housing Report is posted online.

Cumulative pending home sales in Miami rose in July 2011, a 19 percent increase above what they were in the same period in 2010, according to a report from the Miami Association of Realtors.

“Despite unnecessary restrictive mortgage credit and home appraisal practices, Miami continues to exhibit signs of a healthy and balanced real estate market,” said Jack Levine, chairman of the board of the Miami Association of Realtors.

“Foreign buyers and investors have boosted the local market unlike any other in the state and the nation. A favorable lending and home appraisal environment would dramatically strengthen our market and improve consumer confidence.”

Total pended sales jumped 22 percent in July, with single-family homes jumping 25 percent and condominium sales up 20 percent.

A large influx of buyers are Brazilian,

South Florida’s index was at 139.46, down from its peak of 280.8 in December 2006. “This month’s report showed mixed signals for recovery in home prices,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Indices. “No cities made new lows in June 2011.”

South Florida home sale prices in the tri-county area were up 0.6 percent from May, but down 5.1 percent from the same period in 2010. As prices continue to drop slightly, sales have been increasing, and inventory is lower now than last year.

These are good indication of a good time to purchase real estate South Florida.

At least three out of every five homes and condos in Southwest Florida are changing hands with no financing, something that would have seemed almost unthinkable during the boom years of easy credit.l

Multiple Listing Service data show that particular ratio of cash buyers for the 12 months ended July 31 compares with just one out of six in 2006-07.

One reason is that loans are simply harder to come by in the post-recession world. Freshly wounded lenders are risk-averse and they are being extremely picky about whom they loan to.

But another factor is that buyers themselves have developed an aversion to debt and want to pick the great real estate deals that are available on the market, including short sales and REO properties.

“Everybody recognizes that excessive borrowing is what got us into this mess,” said Kim Ogilvie, a luxury agent with Michael Saunders & Co. in Sarasota. “It’s like we’ve still got a hangover and don’t want to touch the stuff.”

That sentiment reaches from the lowliest stratum of the South Florida market — where hundreds of investors are at play — to luxury.

Investors who have been lapping up foreclosed homes and short sales entering the market also prefer cash to close deals because it gives them more control. They do not have to wait for appraisals that could come in under what they offered. They can avoid dealing with finicky bankers and can close deals faster. Cash also allows them to get properties at lower prices and beat out any competing buyers that may need financing.

When it comes to buying homes or condos at county foreclosure auctions, investors have little choice.

“When you buy at clerk auctions, you have to have the cash there by 4 p.m.,” said Jeffrey Twigg, an Horizon Realty agent who buys homes at auction and resells after fixing them up. “There isn’t time to get financing.”

The cash trend is a complete reversal from the boom.

That was a time when banks were throwing money at borrowers so they could keep packaging loans into mortgage-backed securities and selling them to investors around the world.

But now that they have been scorched by poor underwriting and are contending with defaults, lenders are much harder to deal with.

“Most Americans can’t qualify for mortgages,” said Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach real estate consultant. “If they can’t get an FHA loan, they have to come up with 20 percent deposits and meet strong income and credit requirements. So even though interest rates are at 30- to 40-year lows, most people are being turned down.”

Appraisal issues are also complicating deals.

If an appraisal does not approach the price worked out between buyer and seller, a bank will not lend, said Bill Seider, a real estate attorney with Sarasota’s Williams Parker law firm. And like banks, appraisers are also much more cautious these days.

But it is not only buyer creditworthiness and appraisal issues holding up deals. There are also often questions about the condition of houses and condos.

“Secondary market regulations preclude a lot of loans on properties that need to be rehabbed because big institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are concerned about health and safety issues,” said Bob Saltzman, a 30-year mortgage executive who serves as the Tampa Bay area director for Academy Mortgage.

“If the pool is green and there’s broken glass or raw wires sticking out from where someone ripped out an appliance, it’s hard to get financing.”

Those problems have to be fixed before secondary mortgage giants will give their blessing to a loan, and current owners either do not have the money or do not want to spend it, Saltzman said. So they look for cash buyers who do not need anybody’s approval.

In the meantime, forces are at work in the global economy that are prompting buyers to pay cash for real estate.

The extreme volatility in the stock market — in part driven by concerns about thrifty consumers and worries the global economy is stagnating — is pushing people back into real estate.

At the same time, record-low interest rates that the Federal Reserve has created to stimulate the economy have pushed the yields on bonds, certificates of deposit and money market accounts to fractions of their historical levels.

That has real estate looking like a good value, said Steve DuToit, an agent with Keller Williams in Sarasota. The price decline of the past five years has erased unrealistic boomtime gains. The rental market remains strong because so many people cannot get loans to buy.

“If someone has $100,000 in the bank, he or she can buy a three-bedroom home and rent it out for $1,150 per month,” DuToit said. “Use $450 of that to pay real estate taxes, insurance and maintenance and you’re left with $650 per month, which represents a 7.8 percent return.”

The hope of such a return motivated Heather Perry to spend $408,000 for a house on The Masters Avenue in Lakewood Ranch.

Unable to borrow money because of a recent short sale, Perry overcame her fears with the conviction that real estate might be the best way to make back the money she lost.

By renting her Lakewood Ranch house, Perry figures she can make a 5 percent annual return on her money.

By holding the house for five or six years, Perry figures she can make 25 percent more as the value appreciates to around $500,000.

Foreign buyers also have been pouring into the Florida market lately on hopes of similar returns and because of the strength of their currencies against the dollar.

Even less able to borrow money than their American counterparts, these European, Latin American and Canadian investors are invariably paying in cash.

“Canadians and Europeans are used to making larger downpayments and they see this as really good time to buy,” said McCabe, the real estate consultant. “They also have a longer-range investment mentality and expect smaller returns than Americans.”

Though it makes sense to borrow money when interest rates are this cheap, many buyers are also not yet willing to accept the uncertainty that comes with it.

“There is an aversion to taking on additional risk right now,” McCabe said. “But they can always go back and finance their purchases when the economy improves.”