According to U.S. Commerce Department figures released this month, nationwide housing starts increased 0.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 610,000 units in September; which was due completely to a 4.4 percent gain in the single-family sector. Because of this slight increase in new home construction, the economic outlook is looking up for 2011. Many golf club and active adults communities are encouraged by this positive prediction as they introduce new plans and prices for 2011.

Builders Responding To Consumer Demand

Builders are carefully responding to the small improvement they are seeing in interest among potential home buyers. They are receiving more inquiries from potential customers and are cautiously excited about this renewed consumer interest. The golf club and gated community industry remains confident that their new plans for 2011 will bring even more potential residents to their communities.

Over the past several years as the real estate market has declined, builders have not sat idly by waiting for potential homebuyers to return. Many realized that they needed to hear from retirees about what kind of community they wanted to live in. By conducting market research and focus groups with their target audience, some builders got ahead of the game and are rolling out new plans and amenities that are more in line with their customers’ wants.

Plans From Award Winning Active Adults Communities

The active adults communities that are dipping their toes back into the market are those that have received design and marketing awards and have been featured in industry magazines. They are established communities that have withstood the lows of the real estate market.

Communities poised to do well releasing new plans offer detached and attached single-family homes priced from the $130s to $3000s. New floor plans offer various size options with one, two or even three bedrooms. These homes open the door to a fantastic active adult lifestyle. With multiple floor plans to choose from, many feature open flowing designs, sunny kitchens, and breakfast nooks, welcoming sun rooms and dining areas, cozy dens and master suites with breathtaking baths. Several plans allow for a lanai, which is great for quiet, relaxing afternoons or entertaining friends and family.

Communities With Golf Club & Amenities

Devoted golfers will feel right at home in active adults communities with private golf courses. Many communities house casual and formal restaurants in their golf club as well, and residents can also find everything for their golfing adventures at well-stocked pro shops. Additionally, men and women alike will be comfortable and find all the amenities they require at the locker facilities. Many clubs boast grand balconies overlooking the course, an aquatic driving range, practice chipping and putting greens.

Also found at many gated communities, residents can enjoy a spa and fitness center, ballroom, tennis and pickle ball courts, restaurants, and often even a community room and studios for a variety of arts and crafts.

Builders are taking advantage of the positive outlook on the nation’s real estate market by offering new plans and pricing for 2011. Retirees looking for a gated community with tons of amenities should take a look at what’s out there!

Chris Harman is a writer for Solivita, a premier gated community in Kissimmee Florida. Solivita, like many other active adults communities, is offering great new plans and prices for 2011.

You are about to learn the secrets to creating a multiple six figure income while still having time to do what you love to do. This is a very exciting topic because we really are going to blow the lid off the roof and break through those glass ceilings that you’ve set for yourself.

This topic is for you if you if:

• You are tired of stressing about money
• You are frustrated that you’re not living your full potential
• You are tired of feeling held back and not even knowing why
• You know that you could be taking your business to next level and are tired of sabotaging yourself
• You have done well in the past want to bring your business back up to speed
• You are tired of using the economy as an excuse
• You are ready to breakthrough all of your barriers and create a multiple 6 Figure Income for 2011

I was once where you are. I struggled with how to get more clients. I struggled with how to get more leads and how to fill up my pipeline. I felt the pain that many of you are feeling right now, the frustration and the stress of not knowing how to get my business back on track.I’ve been on your journey and what I realized was that it all began with me. Even though I tried to put the responsibility for my success on to the economy, competition or personal things were happening in my life; I didn’t start succeeding until I took 100% responsibility for my life. In other words with the help of coaches and mentors, I liberated myself from the victim position of thinking that I was helpless to change my income. I had to let go of the idea that the economy or the marketplace or anything outside of me determined my success.

In other words I found that by getting outside help and going within, I was able to win the “inner game of success” and that made all the difference. With coaching, I changed my inner programming. Instead of operating from an old paradigm that didn’t allow me to fulfill my full potential, I learned to let go and install new software in the computer of my mind. I created new Empowered beliefs.

The first thing to understand is that you can only be as successful as your inner programming allows you to be.

Say you want to create a new year’s resolution that 2011 is going to be your best year yet. But the part of you that is creating that resolution is your conscious mind and that is only responsible for 2% of the results you get in your life. That’s why it’s so common to make New Year’s resolutions and then forget them.

The other 98% is your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is full of the self limiting beliefs about you and your success. Unless you have an image of yourself as of success on the inner level, it can’t manifest out on the outer level, or if it does you will find a way to sabotage it.

The second thing to understand is that the latest brain research tells us that we have programmed circuits in our brain from childhood and that we are unaware of them.

I was working with a client who recently discovered that she was programmed to think of herself as “defective”. As a real estate agent she struggled for years but could never get anywhere in her business, until she worked with me. In a short amount of time it became clear to both of us that if she was going to be successful, she was going to have to reprogram the belief that she was defective as well as many other self-limiting beliefs from her childhood.

In summary, you need to find the origin of faulty programming, and when you first began to believe things about yourself that weren’t true such as:

• I have to be perfect to be okay
• I’m not smart enough to succeed
• I can’t seem to create what I want in my life
• If I ask for what I want I’ll be rejected

It’s not enough to put an affirmation on top of the self-limiting belief. I would be like putting a Band-Aid on top of an infected wound. This is where a lot of people go wrong; they use affirmations which seem to work for a while but eventually the old beliefs surface again because they’ve never been wiped out.These self-limiting beliefs are not your fault. However, it is your responsibility to locate those beliefs and extract them so they don’t ruin your life.

The next thing to understand is that if you’ve been saying to yourself “I know what I should be doing; I’m just not doing it.”, then you are suffering from excess baggage that is weighing you down.

There are two kinds of coaching: there’s accountability coaching and there is mindset coaching. If you’ve had any coaching at all so far, it has probably been accountability coaching. There are many real estate gurus who give weekend seminars and then offer accountability programs to learn their system.

These accountability coaching programs are not bad. Many of them teach you how to prospect, how to have powerful scripts when talking to prospective clients, how to build referral systems, and many other things you need to know to be a successful real estate agent.

Most of the time however, people take these accountability coaching programs before they have cleared away the self-limiting beliefs in their mind. Before meeting me, my clients didn’t have anyone that could help them to discover their self-limiting beliefs, release them, and replace them with updated empowered beliefs such as:

• I am more than good enough
• Success comes to me easily and effortlessly
• I make money by working smarter, not harder
• I have a valuable service to offer people are happy to hear from me

This is the power of Mindset Coaching over Accountability Coaching. Once those new beliefs are installed in your subconscious mind, there can be no stopping you. Then you will realize that your success is entirely about keeping and maintaining positive pro-success mindset. In other words, mindset coaching can help you succeed in “winning the inner game of success.”

About the author: Dr. Maya Bailey, Multiple 6 Figure Income Business Coach for Real Estate Professionals, integrates her 20 years of experience as a psychologist with 14 years of expertise in marketing. Her powerful transformational work creates a Success Formula for Real Estate Professionals ready to create a Multiple 6 Figure Income. To get your free report: “7 Simple Strategies to More Clients in 90 Days” and to apply for an Initial Complimentary Consultation, go to http://www.90daystomoreclients.com.

For years and years (“good ole days”) buying a home through a real estate agent was similar to going to Sears to buy a stove: you were not legally represented by the agent with whom you were working. Since the Seller usually paid the commission and the listing broker shared that commission with the selling broker, the buyer’s “agent” was in fact a subagent of the Seller. In the 90’s a class action law suit (dual agency) involving one of the largest brokerage firms in the country resulted in a settlement rumored to be a bunch of money. Agency immediately became of great interest and concern for both real estate companies looking to avoid similar problems and state governments.

Today all states have laws defining real estate agency: buyer agency, seller agency, and dual agency, although some still allow for “facilitators,” where no agency has been established. Agency laws define the relationship between the agent and his client, or principle, and the duties of each. Illinois has, by statute, established the duties of the agent to the clients: care, obedience, accounting, loyalty, confidentiality, and disclosure (remember the Boy Scout oath?). The simple rule is that, excepting unlawful demands, the client’s interest must be placed above the agent’s interest. The client would be obligated to treat the agent honestly, cooperate toward fulfilling the goal for which the agency was formed, and to compensate the agent as agreed.

Establishing agency requires competent parties, a lawful purpose, and agreement between the parties. An agency can be express (written or oral, but written is pretty important) or implied (by words or actions) and once established must be taken very seriously. Obviously if an agent has discussed the job, duties, objectives, compensation, etc. with a prospective client or customer, and they have agreed to work together, an agency relationship has been created. Some acts can be performed without creating an agency: things like answering questions without giving advice. Just answering questions about a home, for instance at an open house, is considered “ministerial” and does not create agency: the other party is considered a consumer: a potential client. A problem can arise if the agent begins to give the consumer advice or moves beyond providing information about a specific home. The Illinois law says, “Licensees shall be considered to be representing the consumer they are working with …,” so an unintended agency relationship may be created.

While most agents will represent either a buyer or seller in a transaction, Illinois license law allows Dual Agency in which the same agent “represents” both buyer and seller. As an example, if an agent had a listed property (a seller client) and a buyer for whom the listing seemed perfect, with the informed written consent of both clients, the agent could show and perhaps negotiate a contract between his/her two clients. It’s difficult to understand the term Dual Agency in this transaction: by definition, agency demands working in the best interest of the client and the two clients have opposing interests (purchase price). The agent in this case more intermediates than advocates. The potential for claims of unfair representation are much greater in this type of transaction and utmost care must be taken to insure that both parties are fully informed and agree before any showing takes place. (Undisclosed dual agency is the basis for the law suit mentioned in the first paragraph.) While most agents would like to receive both ends of the commission, it is probably safer from a legal perspective and certainly better service to the client, to avoid dual agency. Illinois uses the “designated agent” approach to allow a Broker to appoint one agent to represent a Seller and another to represent a Buyer in the same transaction without creating a dual agency within the same brokerage.

When beginning to work with a client, get the relationship in writing (if at all possible). It is mandatory for a listing, but sometimes buyers are reticent to sign agency agreements. That may be because the agreement is not properly explained. The Illinois buyer agency forms are pretty non-threatening if explained correctly. Always disclose your position and any information (other than confidential) you have about the property or the agency relationship. If a potential buyer at an open house expresses interest in the property, for example, make certain to disclose that you represent the Seller and that the “buyer” should not rely on your assistance for other than ministerial acts.

Disclosure, agreements in writing, and making sure the client’s interest always comes first are the main points, but training and study of agency law is extremely important.
The State of Texas, for instance, requires 30 hours of Agency in its pre-license course.
Illinois includes it in core curriculum for continuing education. The Illinois License Act of 2000 (Article 15) lays it out in detail and can be found most easily at http://law.justia.com/illinois/codes/chapter24/23835.html (it took me quite a while to find it at the State of Illinois General Assembly site and the URL runs off the page).

If you are getting ready to sell your home and you are in the Illinois real estate market there are a few things that you can do in order to make your home perfect when it comes time to show it off. When you are looking to sell your home whether you are doing it as a for sale by owner or you are doing it through a Illinois real estate broker you are going to want to make a favorable impression and get the most out of your property.

First thing take a look around your house, what is in need of maintenance that is already part of your home. Check for things like termites repair the lawn and landscaping. Also, consider cleaning and replacing gutters, clean the driveway, replace damaged siding and a new paint job. The first thing that people see when they approach your home is the lawn and the outside of the house. Doing these things can increase your chances of selling your home when you put it on the Illinois real estate market.

The next thing is to look at the rooms in your home. If you are planning to remodel the best place to start is either the bathroom or the kitchen. Either one of these spaces are more likely to bring a return to you than anything else. It is also an enticement to people to know a place has a new kitchen and bathroom.

Make sure that you finish the project and clean up before putting the house on the market. Nothing will make a buyer run faster than to know the house may not be ready when they are. Once you have completed the remodeling you are going to do if any it is time to look at the way the house is laid out.

People have an amazing amount of things and these things can make a home look cluttered and untidy .The best thing to do if you are getting your home ready to show is to put everything you can away. The less things that are in a room the more room there appears to be. That is not to say that tasteful and small additions are not welcome. You want your house to look like a home but you also want to maximize on visual presentation. Repair any holes or marks, which might be in the walls. This will also help to give your home a fresh appearance on the inside.

These are only a few of the small things you can do around your home to bring it up to tiptop shape before you put it on the market so that you can get the best that the Illinois real estate market has to offer both in the way of buyer and in the way of price. You have a better chance of selling a home that looks well taken care of for the price you want than one that is in need of repair.