Last week I flew out to Phoenix to my second NAHREP National Board meeting. The meeting was held at the Biltmore Hotel. What a spectacular facility! I believe NAHREP’s decision to host the annual Hispanic marketing convention here in September is a great idea.

It was an action packed two days filled with spirited conversation and enthusiasm about NAHREP’s past, present and future. The NAHREP board of directors is a unique mix of influential real estate practitioners, corporate executives from banks, title companies, insurance and real estate franchises as well as people with experience or a background in politics. There is a lot of passion for the organization and great ideas that will definitely continue to help build NAHREP into the premier Hispanic trade organization in the United States. A lot was covered and I won’t bore with the details, but this year is set to be an outstanding one, filled with regional conferences in Dallas (already took place) Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco, Anaheim and the national conference set for Phoenix. Next month I will be working on creating a class to be taught about Blogging for the Hispanic Real Estate Market which I will also turn into a free webinar. This class will be taught at all regional conferences. I will post more information about the details of the regional events as I get more information. I have also included a short video from our board meeting where Phil Gordon, Phoenix’s Mayor stopped by to say hi and welcome us to his city.

 Here is a video from a presentation that I did along with Tino Diaz at the NAHREP regional convention in Dallas, Texas.

It has been several weeks and I still haven’t written anything about the NAHREP Legislative Conference in Washington DC. It was a great event uniting three multicultural real estate associations, NAHREP (Hispanic), AREAA (Asian) and NAREB (Black/African American). The three organizations laid out a Five Point Plan of Action for Congress:

       1) Protect Homeownership

a. Create a National Foreclosure Prevention Fund to help distressed borrowers with realistic loan modifications and workouts, including the use of soft seconds.

b. Create new CRA requirements and incentives for banks to pursue innovative loss mitigation and foreclosure prevention initiatives.

c. Lenders should not pursue foreclosures until they have fully documented that all reasonable actions were taken to contact the borrower and provide them with a full spectrum of options to workout or modify their loans.

d. CRA examinations must include a review of REO disposition strategies and their potential impacts on low to moderate and Minority neighborhoods.

e. Focus the 5% of GSE pre-tax profits to be used as a loan loss reserve to refinance “difficult to cure” borrowers and renovate REO properties for sale as affordable housing inventory.

       2) Reverse Declining Market Policies

a. Create a single, transparent and consistent industry policy for indentifying and appropriately assessing true risk in “Declining Markets.” This policy should clarify the industry’s practice for assessing higher fees and additional underwriting requirements where market prices are truly in decline. Such policy should ensure that low to moderate and minority communities are not disproportionately affected by the unintended consequences of these policies.

b. Create a “declining markets second mortgage fund” to stimulate market demand and pricing stability for homes in declining markets. The second mortgage should be interest free and payable on a sliding scale as home prices appreciate over the first five years of origination. Buyers should maintain a reasonable amount of equity while honoring their obligation to repay a portion of the second mortgage.

       3) Increase Multicultural Counseling and Outreach

a. Increase funding for post-purchase counseling and require that counseling is made available in multiple languages.

b. Leverage multicultural professional communities to reach out to the borrowers facing foreclosures to increase the likelihood of contacting the borrower.

c. Require that servicers provide loss mitigation options in the language that the borrower is most proficient in.

       4) Restore the Public’s Trust and Confidence

a. Employ stricter regulatory sanctions and professional standards to ensure homebuyers are treated fairly and ensure sustainable homeownership for all minority families.

b. Support federal and state licensure and education standards for all mortgage professionals that strike a fair and reasonable balance of responsibility between all lenders, mortgage professionals and consumers.

c. Create a national directory for all loan originators and mortgage brokers to track individual performance and eliminate predators while rewarding ethical practices.

d. Promote the highest ethical standards and best practices in the real estate and lending industries ensuring fair pricing, responsible underwriting, and complete transparency in all transactions to be provided in the clearest and simplest terms.

       5) Protect the Housing System and Create Liquidity

a. Strengthen regulatory oversight of the GSEs to ensure market and public confidence in these vital housing institutions while expanding their capacity to meet their public mission. It is critical that the GSEs be given the necessary tools to pursue their affordable housing mission and be held accountable to meet the lending needs of minority communities.

b. Make FHA Reform a reality. FHA has been left behind with processes and rules that no longer work well with the private sector. FHA faces challenges in effectively managing its resources and programs in this quickly changing mortgage market. These challenges have already diminished FHA’s ability to serve its public purposes. FHA needs to remain viable for families who have no alternatives for homeownership or affordable rental housing.

c. Subject Wall Street firms to sufficient regulatory oversight. With more Wall Street firms involved in origination and servicing business, there must be adequate oversight related to these firms’ organizations and servicing practices.

d. Provide relevant products and offerings. Increase homeownership opportunities among underserved communities and declining markets. Advocate for flexibility related to product approval and create new tools, such as automated alternative credit products, to more accurately capture the creditworthiness of borrowers who lack traditional credit history.

The content in this post was provided by NAHREP and is original content of their organization.

Frank Borges Llosa, real estate broker in Alexandria, VA is doing something pretty unique and Web 2.0. He has created a site called FranklyMLS.com and takes advantage of the community wiki like tools enabling real estate professionals and consumers to add content included photos and comments about the property. I love to see new innovations in the online space and commend him for using new technologies to help consumers get a better picture of their property options. I like the fact it promotes more cooperation between agents or as he puts it “coopetition”

I am curious to see how much it catches on. I think it has promise. Overall, I wish the project luck. I will definitely invite Frank to join the VivaReal community as soon as we are up and running. We look to surround ourselves with innovative thinkers to contribute to the development of VivaReal.

In May VivaReal.net, our real estate portal for Latin America will be receiving our first listing feed. The listing feed will have approximately 11,000 properties in Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and will include numerous other countries as well. In the next month real estate professionals and companies will also be able to create their own personal profile page on the website. Stay tuned for more updates.

Just a couple more days until real estate leaders gather in Washington DC to meet at NAHREP’s annual legislative conference. Bilingual Marketing Group received an invitation to attend a White House briefing. I will be blogging about the meeting and other meetings during the trip. My plan is to bring my handycam everywhere (except in this meeting, they won’t let me) so I can capture the event. I plan on doing some interviews with influential leaders. Stay tuned for some videos. Here is a snippet of the email about the WH briefing:

“This is to let you know that we have just been granted an exciting, exclusive White House briefing:

On: Friday, March 28, 2008

From: 1:00pm EDT till 3:00pm EDT.

This will be a no-media event on differing perspectives on current housing issues. We anticipate comments by Commerce Secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson Bill-Lerach-Rehabilitates-His-Legacy and other high-ranking officials including from the FHA. This briefing is exclusively for NAHREP’s Board, Presidents’ Council members, selected sponsors and also for AREAA and NAREB executive leadership.”

It is an interesting time as Hispanic homeownership has been on a major growth pattern during the last decade, but this is tough to sustain with the current avalanche of foreclosures. Hopefully new foreclosure-prevention and loss-mitigation initiatives will help financially-stressed borrowers preserve their homes. This will undoubtedly be a major topic of conversation during the event.

A few weeks ago Swanepoel’s real estate trends book was released. He has been tracking real estate trends for over 10 years and this new report is hardly a disappointment. Last night I eagerly tore through the FedEx package, sat down and held off eating dinner for an hour (that’s how good it is…I love food).

In the first chapter he focuses a few pages on the growing Hispanic market or as he puts it “the Hispanic opportunity”. He mentions NAHREP, Casa Latino and a few other clients and partners of Bilingual Marketing. Some other topics and chapters of interest include:

• The Evolution of Online Communities and Networks

• The Changing Borders and Boundaries of MLS

• The Evolving and Changing Real Estate Business Model

The clear statement that the report makes is that the industry is experiencing a paramount change. Technology is a constant focus of the report and he does an excellent job of breaking things into small bite sized pieces for easy digestion. I particularly like the time line of the Real Estate Web. You can check it out here at FOREM.

Aside from technology he writes from a balanced perspective about the implications of the changing real estate market for real estate professionals and consumers. The report does a good job of covering all aspects of real estate and is worth reading if you are involved in the industry. You can order it here

Let’s face it, not everyone is a good speller. I probably would have mispelled the word “misspelled” on this blog post if I didn’t have spell check. Misspellings create a great opportunity to drive some traffic to your site whether it is done through the sponsored results (Pay-Per-Click) or the organic results (Search Engine Optimization). PPC is easier because all you have to do is bid on the words/key phrases directly, but SEO is a tad bit trickier as one of the main components of driving traffic is to make sure that you have content on your site that reflects the keywords searched. I do not recommend that you misspell words on your website just to drive this traffic because ultimately you will create a poor image for those that know the correct spelling of the words. Some good examples of common misspelled key words are “Benta de Casas” or “Bienes Raises” (the correct spelling is “Venta de Casas” and “Bienes Raíces”). After doing some research in google I can see that these are popular misspelled words. If you are running a PPC campaign in Spanish, give these key phrases a try, but make sure you that you don’t include these words in the ad copy or on your website as this will project a poor image.  

As the U.S. Hispanic population continues to grow (around 44 million) more people are connecting to the Internet.

Things to keep in mind:

Language preference – Not all Hispanics in the US speak Spanish. The numbers vary from different sources, but the mix of English only, bilingual and Spanish dominant Latinos means that providing content in both languages is a wise choice.

Age/generation – Is your potential client first, second or third generation? First generation Latinos tend to speak more Spanish than English so expanding on the first point, you are going to want to consider the age of your potential client and their level of acculturation when launching any campaign on the Internet.

Neutral Spanish – The Spanish language tends to have particular nuances, words or expressions that are only popular in one or a few different countries. For example, words like “Bienes Raíces” (used throughout Latin America for real estate) work better than “Finca Raíz” (used only in Colombia). Choose your words carefully. There are some words that are common in one country and downright offensive in others (coger).

Ideas:
Hyper-local bilingual blogs – Blogs continue to grow in popularity as a source for real estate information. Search engines love blogs and having local area blog posts will help you to gain some traction in google. Having a hyper-local blog will establish you as an expert in your market….and guess what? The competition in Spanish is practically non-existent. This requires a decent time commitment, but will be great for your business in the long-term.

PPC in Spanish – I am not a big fan of Pay-Per-Click advertising for the general market, but doing it in Spanish is such an underutilized strategy that it can have a great ROI if executed properly (keyword/phrase selection, proper budgeting, good ad copy, ongoing campaign optimization).

Provide content in Spanish to other web sites – This is a recent idea that I have yet to aggressively exploit, but I think it is filled with potential. Hook up with a really successful mortgage or title rep that you have a solid relationship with. The colleague should have a well positioned web site or blog. Provide them with some educational content for their site in Spanish and ask them to link back to you. This will help them get more exposure in a new market and drive direct traffic to you. Also the backward link will help your site be rise up the ranks of google.

These are just a few ideas on a Sunday night. The important thing to point out is that on the Internet this market is wide open and by making a concerted effort and providing helpful resources tailored to this community will help drive tons of business.

NAHREP’s 2008 Legislative Conference is just around the corner. Real estate practitioners will come from across the states to meet with policy makers on the Hill. NAHREP is lead by Tim Sandos, someone who has a multitude of experience in politics and business. Last month I had the opportunity to meet with him out in St. Louis where he lives and during several chats with him over lunch and dinner my confidence continues to be reinforced by his keen understanding of the issues, passion for doing the right thing and insight into how housing policies affect minorities. I look forward to hearing NAHREP’s leader speak in March.

The first sessions include “Key Regulatory Issues Impacting Today’s Real Estate Professionals” and “Housing Issues Before the Banking and Finance Committees of the US Senate and House”. I am looking forward to the lunch with speaker Alphonso Jackson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

The event should also be a good opportunity to meet chapter presidents and board members. I was recently nominated to the board of directors and during the conference NAHREP will announce who they have selected.

During the conference Bilingual Marketing Group is scheduled to be addressing conference attendees about the new developments with VivaReal.us. We are going to be explaining the special benefits to NAHREP members. The conference will be the official launch place of our new blogging platform that will allow real estate practitioners to create their own profile page and blog (in both English and Spanish). My goals is to bring NAHREP members up to speed on how blogging can help establish them as experts in their local market (helping to bring in new clients and maintain relationships with past clients). This year is going to bring renewed excitement about the Internet and those real estate professionals that are open to adapting new technology in their business will increase their market share.

Those that haven’t yet registered for this year’s conference may do so here.

Nos vemos en DC!