When buying Phoenix real estate it is very important to also know a little about the Phoenix market. Part of buying houses is doing some due diligence. This includes considering the neighborhood, the area and the vicinity and the whole thing as it is linked to your way of life and job. Next you also should check out the property, do an inspection, check the title report to be certain title is clean.

Along with the due research items above you should also know how the Phoenix housing market is performing. Some of the fundamentals that you should really know are. Inventory or how many houses are active and how many are selling. This will tell you how fast these are being soaked up. The ordinary balance in the Phoenix market is about 4 months, but it depends also on the specific segment. The higher priced the segment the more months or inventory are normal.

You also want to know what the sales price to retail price proportion is. This will tell you the general market discount or what percentage of the asking price are folk paying. Keep in mind that it may be over 100% if it is a hot market.

What's the overall trend. What is the median and average price. This will tell you which way price may be heading. Are they going up, steady or still declining. Additionally you should know the seasonal trends in Phoenix. When do sales top in the year, when are they the smallest and why.

The why is vital because luxury homes, apartments and bread and butter homes all follow their own trends because they attract different people. Phoenix draws plenty of snow birds, many from Canada and the properties Canadians buy will be different from what a normal family will buy. That's the reason why the peak of sales is in the early summer when families like to move because college is out. Luxury homes in cities like Paradise Valley have a pretty stable sales trend across the year.

Almost all segments have a dip in Jan and February as a result of the very slow for real estate vacation season towards the end of the year. Why are sales lowest in January then? Because it takes 30-45 days from contract to sales.

inPhoenix Realty Group is a grouping of experienced Realtors in Larger Phoenix. They supply extensive Phoenix housing reports including data, graphs and analysis as well as views about what is going on with Phoenix real estate lists and sales.

Although the housing bubble exploded about 4 years ago, the housing market is still in the doldrums, and a turnaround is nowhere in sight. For new homes and new home construction this is especially true. This situation is unfortunate for the overall economy since building a new home creates 3 jobs for a 12 month period, and it also generates roughly $90,000 in various taxes.

At first glance the numbers of used homes that are being sold don’t look all that terrifying. The figures are down a bit over 10%, and this is certainly significant. This pales in comparison with the level of sales for new homes which is down by more than half over what is normal. In fact the figures for sales of new homes in 2010 were the lowest in the fifty years that the government has been keeping records. The pace that is being set in 2011 is even lower still. Based on February, 2011, new home sales, the annualized rate is only 250,000. In 1963 the number of new home sales was over 500,000, and since then the population of the U.S. has increased by almost 120 million people.

Why is a recovery in housing taking so long? The reason is that there have been huge numbers of foreclosures, and the list seems to keep on growing longer all the time. More foreclosures are forecasted for 2011 than occurred in 2010 when there were already over a million of them. The most shocking statistic this author has read about real estate lately was one published by the census bureau, which is just now making reports on the 2010 census. It said that 18% of all the homes in Florida are sitting vacant.

Florida is a state with almost 19 million inhabitants. To think that almost one out of every five homes in the state is sitting empty is almost mind boggling. The figure for Arizona is that 16% of homes are vacant.

The largest issue holding down the sale of newly constructed homes is price. They have done everything they can to cut costs and keep prices down, but the huge numbers of vacancies and foreclosures on used homes has created an average price difference of about 30% or more. It is reasonable for a new home to command a price premium over an older home, but the normal delta is about 15%, so buyers are opting for significantly lower prices on used houses.

Additionally there is the phenomenon of what is referred to as the shadow inventory. These are houses upon which the foreclosure process has begun, but they are not yet up for sale. Many of these properties will eventually go on the real estate market as foreclosures, so the dilemma is certain to continue for quite some time.

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Before I started playing with the new Twitter technology I had my doubts about its usefulness. I have had access to my twitter account and have periodically used it to publicize the RedX Real Estate Lead generation system. Because of this, I am just learning to implement the technology. However, now that I understand technology, I can appreciate how REALTORS online should be utilizing this tool to attract leads.

So how do you use Twitter in a promotion and marketing campaign? Before we begin you need to understand that Twitter is only a single point of contact for your prospects and that numerous touches are usually required to convert a client. Also, understand that Twitter decorum implies that when you follow a users tweets, they may in turn monitor you.

With that background, what are the steps to use Twitter as a real estate marketing tool? The primary step is to connect your twitter account to your website. If you have a site, blog or web presence, add a “Follow me on Twitter logo” with a hyperlink to your twitter site.

To begin utilizing Twitter as a promotion resource, create an auto-responder on your twitter account so that when anybody chooses to follow you, they will automatically receive a thank you response with a call to action. I use TweetLater.Com for my auto-responders. The message should thank the user for following, and incorporate a call to action. Your may choose to make your call to action an offer for a complimentary report, data, or some other offer that allows you to capture more information about your target lead. For example, my call to action is “Thanks for the Follow! Want a discount on listing leads from RedX? Visit me here for more info.”

The next step is to begin tweeting. You should routinely tweet, but additionally be aware that there is a shortcut that you may utilize when you cannot post directly. If you control a blog that you bring up to date often, you may post the feed directly to your twitter account using TwitterFeed.

The next step in your twitter promotion should be to incorporate followers who live near you. You can find followers who reside in your area simply by doing a keyword search on the twitter user directory Twellow. Just search the twellow list for active tweeters that live in your area and follow those that may be in the market for a new home.

There are a number of other ways that you can incorporate twitter as part of your promotion, together with mobile messaging and even film. We won’t get into those details here, but may address them later.

Randy Xillion is the marketing director for REALTOR Leads which provides sales leads and marketing tools to real estate brokers, agents and professionals.