Too many professionals in real estate, including those in insurance and finance, wrongly believe Asian Americans have little need for home buying assistance, the association claims. Part of the problem, it says, is that many Asians both have embraced American society and appear to be prospering.

Some data indicates Asian Americans are doing well, the association acknowledges, particularly when compared to other racial minorities. But the study also shows:

• The home ownership rate for Asians still lags 20 percent behind that of white non-Hispanic Americans.
• Thirty-nine percent of Asians buy their homes with another family member, and 17 percent belong to households of three or more families.
• Asians overall tend to have lower median per capita incomes than the population as a whole.

As a result of the study, Wong says, the association wants to “challenge the real estate industry to create … programs tailored specifically for the Asian real estate community.” He points to the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals as one of several groups whose “hard work” pioneered similar programs for Hispanics.

Wong contends “the Asian consumer presents a great business opportunity for real estate professionals.” According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Asians remain the nation’s second fastest growing ethnic population, numbering more than 12 million people. The population is expected to triple in size by 2050.

Among Pennsylvania’s 12,365,455 residents in 2003, the Census Bureau estimates, 262,825 (2.1 percent) were of Asian origin. In New Jersey, it estimates 564,802 (6.5 percent) of that state’s 8,638,396 residents as Asians; and in Delaware, the estimate was 20,507 (less than 1 percent) of its 817,491 residents were Asians.

This article was originally published at Joe Zlomek’s Docket
Photo by Andrew Kim via StockXchng

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LendingTree, the online lending and real estate exchange, on Wednesday said it had acquired iNest, a referral network that serves builders and buyers of new homes. Its services and functions would be combined with LendingTree’s RealEstate.com brand and website over time, the company said. RealEstate.com carries real estate listings, helps visitors connect with licensed real estate agents, and offers mortgages, re-financings and home equity loans.

Also Wednesday, Sotheby’s said it signed six real estate companies during the past 10 days to join its network of luxury real estate brokerages. The brokers operate in Florida, Colorado, California, Montana and Maine.

Both announcements are business-as-usual to Gary Fromer, senior vice president of Small and Medium Business and Hosting for computer software vendor SAP America Inc. After recent talks with all types of businesses, whose revenues range from $20 million to $200 million, Fromer reports they now operate in a “pretty scary environment” of “pressure to grow and keep costs low at the same time.”

SAP develops and sells software for a variety of business operations, including property management and employee recruitment. This April SAP installed electronic personnel recruiting packages for Al Futtaim, a Middle East firm involved in real estate and finance, and in May it placed asset management software to help an international airport in Germany monitor its building maintenance projects.

Customer and stakeholder expectations are higher, Fromer said Thursday, during a keynote speech to participants at the annual Information Technology Exposition and Conference (ITEC) in Valley Forge, Pa. Competition is tougher too, and both are forcing business owners to demand their firms produce more revenue with fewer resources.

Key to their success, Fromer believes, is innovation. When companies find newer, better and faster ways to accomplish routine tasks, he says, it allows them to free up their people and their time to focus on sales and service.

He also claims that many firms must now rely more heavily on business partners to handle their marketing in multiple channels: on the Web, via indirect or referral programs, and in direct contacts with existing and new customers. “There’s a complexity in every business’s marketing mix that hasn’t been seen before,” Fromer says.

This article was originally published at Joe Zlomek’s Docket

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A division of the U.S. Treasury, the office adopted a regulation Feb. 12 (2004) that “exempts national banks from having to comply with state banking laws,” according to the NAR. It fears the new ruling opens a back door for large, interstate banks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo to both get into real estate and avoid the expense and trouble of state licensure.

As a result of earlier lobbying, the NAR persuaded Congress to forbid the Treasury Department from considering regulations allowing federally chartered banks to enter real estate brokerage and property management.

However, than ban will end Oct.1, 2004, unless extended. If Congress then decides to side with banks and permit their entrance into real estate, the OCC ruling would also allow bankers to ignore real estate licensing laws, the NAR argues. “Taken together, these two regulations could create the real estate industry’s worst nightmare,” says NAR President Walt McDonald.

But the OCC issued a press release Feb. 12 claiming its rules were “misunderstood” and (do) “not grant national banks new powers, such as real estate brokerage, nor does it insulate banks from complying with anti-discrimination laws or state laws in such areas as contracts, torts, taxes or generally applicable criminal statutes.”

This article was originally published at Joe Zlomek’s Docket

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Nielsen Norman Group, a California-based firm that focuses on Web selling strategies, finds consumers complain most about e-mail newsletters that are unsolicited (they didn’t ask for them), contain untargeted content (the articles don’t interest them), or connect them to web pages containing pop-up advertising (they pester them).

“Newsletters need to be smooth and easy: they must be seen to reduce the burdens of modern life,” the company says. “Even if free, the cost in e-mail clutter must be paid for by being helpful and relevant to users, and by communicating these benefits in a few characters in the subject line.”

The 293-page study, titled Email Newsletter Usability, follows up on a similar study Nielsen Norman conducted in 2001. It concludes that recipients do a good job separating wheat from chaff in their inboxes: they readily know what’s spam, and what’s not. And when they get e-mails they didn’t request, they are prone to blocking future dispatches with a one-button click on their spam-filtering software.

The study was based on 101 e-mail newsletters sent to recipients in 12 states and five other countries. It is available for purchase ($298) direct from the authors, and also was the subject of reports in MediaPost, Publish, ClickZ News, and DMnews.

This article was originally published at Joe Zlomek’s Docket

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