Do you want more meaningful conversations with members of Congress? The National Association of REALTORS® has unveiled a new data tool that can help you become a better resource for lawmakers. While NAR has long made housing data available by state and the country's largest metropolitan areas, now you can access information organized by congressional district. This tool will enable you to provide a clearer picture of the size, scope, and composition of the real estate market potentially affected by legislative and regulatory changes being considered by the federal government.

These reports could be enormously valuable the next time you contact your member of Congress or speak with the lawmaker's aides about real estate matters in your area. For example, in Iowa's 4th District, represented by Rep. Steve King (R), there are 344,251 housing units, the home ownership rate is 72.4 percent, 10.7 percent of the housing stock is vacant, the median home value is $102,400, and the median monthly housing cost for homes with mortgages is $1,004. There's rental data as well.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Read more...

We're super excited to be rolling out some new upgrades to Top Producer® CRM. It's been lovingly made to help agents and brokers achieve great things.

Top Producer® CRM keeps your business all in one central place it helps you connect with customers and stay on top of your business. Managing your customers and building repeat business just got faster, easier and more intelligent

So without much further ado, let's introduce you to the new feature enhancements.

Here is What's NEW:

• Contact Permissions for Teams & Brokers
  All the power of Top Producer® CRM now optimized for teams and brokers. Control who sees sensitive data for a more streamlined management and distribution of leads and contacts. Delegate responsibility and track lead progress. Accomplishing things together has never been easier.

• Intelligent Sales Pipeline
  Top Producer simplifies your follow-up by nurturing your leads and helping you turn more into clients - on the fly - with our enhanced wrap up. Set your next appointment, call, email, notes or to-do, the second you get off the phone. You can qualify your lead in seconds on your mobile device, tablet[...]

  Tagged: Reporting

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Software Advice, in collaboration with Buildium and AppFolio, recently launched a property management technology survey for real estate and property management professionals. The survey gauges what (if any) kinds of software and technology property managers are using, how it's impacting their business, and what features they wish their products had. Once enough data is collected, the company will put together a benchmark report demonstrating the trends.

If you're a property management or real estate professional, visit the survey and share your insights.

Tagged: Research

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Fire up the Grill and Fire up Your Business! Memorial Day weekend is upon us and your clients and prospects are getting out the grill for the first big outdoor bash of the season.

Homes.com is here to help with planning a Memorial Day bash, or any other summer party, a breeze with our Red, White and BBQ Entertaining Guide! Chock full of barbecue tips, recipes, outdoor decoration ideas, plus more. This guide is a great resource and can be downloaded for free! Our CUSTOMIZABLE VERSION is a perfect way to brand yourself!

How to Customize in 3 Easy Steps:

1. On the last page of the guide, select the editable text boxes
2. Type in your contact information
3. And print or save for emailing

It's that easy! Download it HERE!

Ideas for Using the Entertainment Guide

• Add this free guide as a special email in one of your drip marketing campaigns! It's a great way to keep in touch with your recent and past homebuyers. When they are ready to sell again, touches like these ensure that your name[...]

  Tagged: Promotional

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In celebration of Bike to Work Week and National Bike Month, we've updated our ranking of Most Bikeable Large U.S. Cities.

Portland narrowly edges out hilly San Francisco for the top spot, with Denver (home of the legendary B-cycle bike share) coming in a close third.

Top 10 Most Bikeable Large U.S. Cities

1. Portland (Bike Score: 70.3)
2. San Francisco (Bike Score: 70.0)
3. Denver (Bike Score: 69.5)
4. Philadelphia (Bike Score: 68.4)
5. Boston (Bike Score: 67.8)
6. Washington D.C. (Bike Score: 65.3)
7. Seattle (Bike Score: 64.1)
8. Tucson (Bike Score: 64.1)
9. New York (Bike Score: 62.3)
10. Chicago (Bike Score: 61.5)

Note: to keep our rankings apples-to-apples the list above only includes cities with 500,000 or more residents.

Smaller cities like Cambridge, MA crushed it with a Bike Score of 92 and Davis, Boulder, and Berkeley all scored in the high 80s. Minneapolis also deserves an honorable[...]

Tagged: Reporting

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More upgrades are being launched today on Delta Media Group's mobile real estate platform for companies and REALTORS®.

This ten minute video showcases the major features of our mobile platform. If you have more detailed questions about the platform, it's best to reach out to us at support@deltagroup.com.

Specifically, the latest updates being pushed live today bring Delta's popular Quick Search feature to our mobile platform.

With this update you get two specific new features:

1. The quick search field will mimic the quick search on the desktop web sites
2. You now have the option of defaulting the quick search to a search result list or a map view

It's the second feature that we believe will get the most attention. The ability to have both map-based GPS style search for real estate along with a search form that goes to a search result list.

Check out the video...if you have questions about this upgrade or would like to add this to your web site please contact us at support@deltagroup.com.