Game Plan: How Real Estate Professionals Can Thrive in an Uncertain Future

For most of the last 30 years, there s been a feeling of insecurity among real estate professionals. Will buyers and sellers forgo the use of our services and buy and sell without us? Will the Internet enable them to do so? Will some outside force intrude in our business, steal our relationships and cut into our incomes? Behind the scenes and in some cases, out in the open these discussions have been going on for the last 30 years. There s always another threat looming over the horizon: Some monstrous outside force, perhaps new forms of government regulation, a change in the mortgage interest deduction or some other change in the legal environment that will erode the business of brokerage. Big banks could wreak havoc or a technology behemoth might rip our customers away. While the types of threats and the level of them have changed over the years, the feeling that disaster is just around the corner has been a part of the DNA of the residential brokerage industry throughout the modern age. Perhaps it s the perception that the money is too good, the level of effort too low or the requirements too easy for real estate professionals to make a living. While paranoia is too strong a word, an underlying sense of unease permeates the profession.

Bryant College.Ian Morris is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Market Leader (NASDAQ: LEDR), a leading provider of software and marketing solutions to the real estate industry. Under Ian s leadership, Market Leader has grown from a cutting-edge idea into a publicly-traded company that was ranked by Deloitte and Touche as the 4th Fastest Growing Technology Company in North America. As one of the pioneers of the online real estate industry, Ian has been helping leading real estate professionals grow their businesses for 15 years and has been named one of Realtor Magazine s Most Influential People and an Inman Innovator of the Year. Before joining Market Leader, Ian worked at Microsoft, where he helped launch the Microsoft Network and Microsoft HomeAdvisor. Ian holds an MBA from The Harvard Business School and a BS from Bryant College.

Steve Murray is editor of REAL Trends, the nation s leading trends and research organization for residential real estate, and president of REAL Trends Consulting, Inc. He has been in the residential real estate field for over 34 years. REAL Trends is read by more than 24,500 leaders in the residential realty industry every week and over 500 CEO s attend REAL Trends conferences each year. REAL Trends has been a leader in industry and housing consumer research for the past 24 years. Such reports as the REAL Trends 500, Canadian 200, the 2006 Consumer Tsunami Study and The Wall Street Journal/REAL Trends The Thousand (ranking of the nation's top sales professionals and teams) are examples of REAL Trends research. REAL Trends also publishes the REAL Trends Blog, which reaches over 17,000 of the nations most productive sales professionals. REAL Trends Consulting, Inc. has handled over 2,150 client assignments for realty firms over the past 24 years, with over 620 merger and acquisition assignments, totaling $10.6 billion in aggregate value. Murray has served dozens of state and local Realtor® associations and MLS organizations in a consulting capacity and several large technology firms serving the residential real estate field. Murray manages five Executive CEO Groups composed of over 90 leading realty firm CEOs from across the country.