NAREE's 5th Annual Bruss Real Estate Book Award Winners

National Association of Real Estate Editors Announces 2012 Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Award Winners

Denver (June 22, 2012) – The National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) has named the winners of the Fifth Annual Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Awards. The awards recognize excellence in books published in 2011 on the broad field of real estate.

Author Kalvin Platt won the first place Gold Award in the Bruss competition for his book: "Master-Planned Communities: Lessons from the Developments of Chuck Cobb," published by the Urban Land Institute.

NAREE’s judges commented that Platt’s book is “beautifully designed and illustrated” and "well organized, clearly written and important” and serves as a “comprehensive look back on what worked – and what didn’t – in early planned communities."

Platt’s book is “an important book evaluating the evolution of ‘new towns’ whose development was guided by one man, unknown to thousands who today live in a diverse range of communities he created. Author Platt overlays ‘smart growth’ concepts on the original plans and subsequent build-outs to see how well these communities perform today as sustainable and pleasing places to live,” commented one NAREE judge.

Charles Long took the Bruss Silver Award for his book: "Finance for Real Estate Development," also published by the Urban Land Institute. Long’s book is a "terrific look at how real estate development deals work. This book is the first year of business school in your hands,” the judges commented.

Winner of the Bronze Award was Buddy Norman with Jay Papasan, for their book, "Shift Commercial: How Commercial Brokers Tackle Tough Times," published by Keller Williams Realty International. “Written for commercial real estate professionals, the book is a timely how-to guide navigating through today's prolonged economic downturn,” the NAREE jurors said.

NAREE's First-Time Author Award winner was Adam Leitman Bailey for the book, "Finding the Uncommon Deal," published by Adam Leitman Bailey PC. "The book is a good up-to-date handbook on the basics of home-buying in today’s market,” the NAREE judges commented.

NAREE esteemed panel of judges have many decades of experience as editors and NAREE leaders. Allen Norwood, freelance editor, HGTV online, retired homes editor, Charlotte Observer and former NAREE vice president, judged the Bruss Book Competition along with two NAREE past presidents: Judith Stark, freelance editor/writer and retired real estate and homes editor, St. Petersburg Times and Carl Larsen, freelance journalist and retired homes section editor, San Diego Union-Tribune.

This year's winners demonstrate NAREE's broad reach in real estate from urban planning to finance and commercial and residential real estate. The awards were presented June 22 at NAREE’s 46th Annual Real Estate Journalism Conference in Denver. All of the award winners received cash prizes.

NAREE’s Bruss Book Awards program is named for the late Robert Bruss, syndicated real estate columnist, prolific writer and a longtime NAREE leader. Bruss, who died in 2007, frequently wrote reviews of realty books. The Bruss Book Awards are sponsored by NAREE presidents Leigh Robinson, founder of Express Publishing, and Brad Inman, founder of Inman News, with a special gift from Art Michaels, executor of the Bruss estate.

NAREE, a non-profit association of writers celebrating 83 years of service to real estate writers, was founded in 1929.

Contact: NAREE Executive Director, Mary Doyle-Kimball for more information at madkimba@aol.com or 561-391-3599.

NAREE Conference Looks at Latino Housing

By: Sharon Stangenes

SAN ANTONIO -- The U.S. Latino population is a bright opportunity in the depressed U.S. real estate industry if only builders and other realty professionals will recognize this fast-growing group’s housing and cultural needs, two experts told the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference in San Antonio.

Latinos make up 15.9 percent of the U.S. population, a figure expected to grow in the next five years, noted consultant Oscar Gonzales, managing partner of Houston-based Gonzales Group.

It’s a significant number of would-be homebuyers, said Gonzales, who joined Scott Caballero, chairman of the San Antonio Board of Realtors, in a discussion of Latino housing preferences.

Citing a recent study by the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), Caballero noted that minorities and immigrants are poised to drive the first-time home buyer market in the next 15 years because of their number, age, larger families and growing economic clout.

Gonzales said this is a national trend because many of those buyers will be outside the traditional “gateway” states such as California, Florida and Texas, where Hispanics are 38 percent of the population, in “non-traditional” locales such Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.

Though Hispanics were targeted by lenders for more subprime loans and, thus, have been affected in higher numbers by foreclosure in the current housing downturn, home ownership is such a strong cultural priority that, unlike some other demographic groups, young Latinos are unlikely to be discouraged from future buying, Gonzales said.

But he and Caballero said the real estate industry will need to be more sensitive to the cultural nuances of Hispanic buyers to tap into future sales and profits.

“It’s all about the family. It’s all about being close,” said Caballero.

While having a bilingual staff to work with Hispanic buyers should be obvious, Gonzales noted that it is often the first-, second- and third-generation relatives who have the money and are the home-buying customers. They likely will be accompanied by older immigrant parents or relatives as entire families are more likely to participate in the buying process. Sales people should take the time to discern which family member is the home buyer and not assume it is the oldest person in the room, Gonzales said.

Latinos have specific architectural preferences including open floor plans with adjacent kitchen, living and dining areas for large family gatherings and two master bedroom suites, at least one on the main floor. Those master suites provide access and privacy for multigenerational living arrangements in a culture where caring for and living with seniors is the norm, Gonzales said.

As a general rule, Gonzales noted Hispanics prefer to congregate for socializing at the front of a home, rather than in the backyard, so builders should set homes further back on the property when possible. In addition, he noted that brick or stucco housing, the building material of choice in Latin countries, is considered more durable and thus prized over wood siding.

He also stressed the importance of gas kitchen ranges accommodate a stable of the Latin diet.

“It is impossible to cook tortillas on electric stoves,” he said.

NAREE Member Sharon Stangenes is a freelance writer and contributor to the Chicago Tribune.

NAREE Conference Close up: The Future of Online Real Estate -- A Play for Bigger Real Estate Data Sets

Plus Real Estate Professionals Help Consumers Navigate, Interpret Property Information

By: Glenn Roberts Jr.

SAN ANTONIO -- These days, searching for a house is not just about the house. It's all about the data: house data, school data, crime data, neighbor data, neighborhood data, local amenities data, ratings and reviews data.

Many websites and mobile apps are serving up real estate-related data in creative ways, slicing and dicing statistics into meaningful charts and visuals, such as interactive maps.

But despite this wealth of digital real estate information, the problem of fragmentation looms large for the industry and consumers -- not every site has all the data, and not all data is created equal.

At the NAREE conference in June, a panel of real estate industry veterans, during a session titled, "The Future of Online Real Estate Information: What happens when every property and everything for sale in America is on competing mega databases?" shared their insights about data ownership, control and syndication.

While consumers have more data at their fingertips, there is still an important role for real estate professionals to play in interpreting and translating that data for their clients, said panelists.

Chip McAvoy, vice president of technology solutions at CoreLogic/MarketLinx, a company that provides software and services for industry professionals, said because there are so many data sources for consumers these days, there is "information overload," and real estate professionals can help consumers sort out the most relevant information.

John Heithaus, chief marketing officer for MRIS, a mid-Atlantic regional multiple listing service, detailed several initiatives that the MLS is engaged in to become a leading real estate resource for consumers.

The MLS has a public property-search website that will be enhanced with lifestyle search features and components that will serve as an eHarmony for the real estate space by finding properties that are the best fit for consumers.

A challenge for the industry and consumers is in identifying the most complete and quality sources for property information, some of the most popular third-party property portals may not be updated as frequently or have the volume of property information that can be found on some industry-operated portals.

Dale Ross,CEO for the Realtors Property Resource, a data resource created in 2009 by the National Association of Realtors, discussed RPR's aim to amass a vast pool of property information by working with MLSs that share their data in order to gain access to the collective data. RPR now has about 280 MLS participants that together represent about 500,000 Realtors, roughly half of NAR's total membership.

CoreLogic has a competing effort, called Partner InfoNet, to aggregate MLS data and share revenue related to this data. Midwest Real Estate Data, a large regional MLS in Illinois, signed on this month as one of its latest participants in the CoreLogic effort, while MRIS in March announced that it agreed to license its data to RPR.

Data syndication -- the industry's dissemination of real estate data to a variety of online sites -- has been a particularly hot topic for the industry, and there has been a lot of acquisitions activity related to real estate data and syndication companies in the past couple of years:

--Yardi Systems acquires PropertyShark and Point 2;

--Realtor.com operator Move Inc. acquires Threewide Corp., operator of ListHub;

--Move Inc. teams with AOL on advertising and real estate search deal;

--Yahoo and Zillow form advertising and real estate search deal;

--Listingbook acquires Cyberhomes;

--Zillow acquires Postlets;

--CoStar acquires LoopNet: --TPG buys DataQuick.

NAREE Member Glenn Roberts is the managing editor of Inman News.

NAREE's San Antonio Conference Offers Social Media Tips for Journalists

By Marcie Geffner, Freelance Writer & NAREE Member

SAN ANTONIO, TX -- Social media can make a journalist's job easier, though the various services can be time-consuming to set up.

That was the premise of "Rock Out Twitter, Facebook and Your Blog in Less Than Half an Hour a Day," a lunchtime presentation at the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference here today. The presentation was given by Fayza Elmostehi, social media editor at CultureMap, a Houston-based online magazine.

"Social media can make your responsibilities easier," Elmostehi said. "It's really easy to use; it's the setup that freaks people out."

In a little less than one hour, Elmostehi explained some of the do's and don'ts of social media and listed some of the basic tools that can help make daily social media tasks more efficient. On the list of tools were HootSuite, TweetDeck, Twitter Lists, Twitterfeed, WordPress, Blogger, Google Alerts, Googlepulse, RSS Graffiti, the new HootSuite for RSS and more.

Elmostehi's top two tips:

• Social media should always be "you-centric" and "them-centric." The former refers to posts about yourself, the latter to posts about other people.

• Tools make social media friendlier, but don't replace human interaction and participation.

Other tips from Elmostehi:

• Twitter and Facebook are "two different networks" that require different approaches and different content.

• Journalists who are high-profile or want to create a public persona should consider a Facebook page as well as a Facebook profile.

• Facebook, Twitter and blogging are "the three most important" social networks since those are "where the people are."

• RSS feeds are useful social media tools, but again, "not a good substitute" for interaction and participation.

Marcie Geffner is a freelance real estate reporter in Los Angeles. Twitter: @marciegeff

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