I am pleased to announce that my latest book, Power Teams: The Complete Guide to Building and Managing a Winning Real Estate Agent Team, is now available. Co-authored with RISMedia President & CEO John Featherston, Power Teams is a definitive resource for Realtors and real estate agent teams alike. Like all of my other books, this one is packed with proven strategies and best practices, and includes insight from some of the nation’s leading real estate agent teams.

From my co-author and publisher, John Featherston:

Being a real estate agent just isn’t what it used to be. Today’s real estate consumers are more sophisticated and knowledgeable than ever before. Ralph and I both believe that in order to remain competitive, agents have to do much more–place more phone calls, ramp up their marketing efforts, offer additional services, and spend more time with their clients to better understand the needs of today’s real estate consumers. Many agents are feeling the strain and looking to the team concept as a solution for themselves and their customers. In Power Teams, we help agents–and brokers–overcome the obstacles of creating and succeeding with an agent teams.

In Power Teams, John and I set out to:

• Define and explain the agent team concept
• Review the various agent team models
• Help agents decide whether the agent team concept is right for them
• Show agents how to build a team from the ground up

To order a copy of Power Teams, please contact Pat Hatton, RISMedia Account Executive, at (800) 724-6000 ext. 124 or e-mail. pat@rismedia.com

Today’s edition of The New York Times carried a story by Joanne Kaufman entitled, “A Shift in Real Estate Books.” The story is about how publishers are scrambling to get books to market to help homeowners and real estate investors with the downturn in the housing market and increasing foreclosures.

The article begins by focusing on the fact that even well-to-do celebrities are having trouble. Recently, Ed McMahon–famous for serving as Johnny Carson’s co-host and for making a small number of people happy as spokesperson for American Family Publishing sweepstakes–has run into some financial trouble and is facing foreclosure on his $4.8 million in home loans. As Kaufman’s article points out, I attempted to contact McMahon to offer my help in reviewing his real estate files (to see if he had been mislead or worse by his financial advisors or the real estate industry professionals who worked on his behalf), but I didn’t get very far.

In any event, The New York Times article serves as a nice nod toward those of us work hard to write great books that truly help homeowners navigate their way through testy waters.

From The New York Times:

A few years ago, when the housing market was white-hot, companies that publish how-to books were tripping over themselves to pump out titles about buying property and making money in the real estate business.

Now that the bottom has fallen out of the housing market, the opposite is true: publishers are updating their backlist titles as well as rushing out newly acquired manuscripts to advise consumers who may have stumbled in the housing game.

For more on this story, read “A Shift in Real Estate Books” or click on the banner image above.