It is truly amazing the number of folks we get to interface with in this job as part-time columnist, part-time gadfly. Literally hundreds write in each week. Some seek information about our company's products and services, some vent, some point out things I may have overlooked in my most recent article—whatever, it is an enjoyable thing.

But lately I am becoming more adept at realizing a truth about many real estate agents and brokers: many don’t believe that the party of excess that was the last three years is really over. While they may hem and haw, complain and bemoan, postulate and prognosticate, far too many are just not ready to do anything about what is staring them in the face: we are entering a very risky time for the real estate industry.

Just the other day, I read an article celebrating the personal home as a retirement device. "Don't pay any attention to the abysmal rate of savings in this country" the article seemed to say, "the equity in your home will pay for your retirement!" Another article bemoaned the Morgan Bank (J.P. must be rolling in his grave) new offering of credit cards with limits up to the equity in one's home. Hey, folks—the system is broken.

Sure, sell your family home for retirement; better yet, spend it on your Visa card!

But, where will you live? Do you want to leave your roots and migrate to "where everything is still cheaper"? (Exactly where is that, please--I’d like to know) Likewise, when will so many realize that the same old techniques won't cut it when the market gets flooded, when prices are falling faster than the barometer in hurricane season, when people walk away from 100% financing that suddenly has a property with an 80% value to that financing? Has anyone noticed our budget deficit? Our national debt? Our trade imbalance? That gas is headed for $4 a gallon? Can you believe that these things are all connected and that they all spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the real estate industry?

Oh, sure: sales are ripping along in parts of the Midwest, while down 15% in California, 50% in Florida. Foreclosures continue to climb, while there are still pockets that haven’t got the point: the party's over—or, at least is in abeyance—for a while. (If I had a nickel for all the brokers and agents who all are agreeing with me, but are doing nothing substantive about it, I’d have enough to put zero down on that new condo that will appreciate 20% annually and pay for my retirement.)

Just today, I was speaking with a broker paying (well, I promised I wouldn’t tell) A LOT for PPC (pay-per-click) and here was his "good news:" A new study (funded by whom, exactly?) says maybe only 15% of PPC is fraudulent! That means instead of a $2.5 billion annual fraud, it’s only a $1.25 billion annual fraud! Don’t worry, be happy!

I am probably as much of an optimist as anyone, but I just can’t shake the conclusions my brain is reaching about the congruence of factors now occurring: We are in for a battle over the next couple of years as the abuses of the past years "undergo market adjustment." This is not the time to be acting like Alfred E Neumann, that cover boy of Mad Magazine (His motto was "What, Me Worry?"). Ergo, here's some simple advice:
If you are not on a battle footing, get there. If you aren’t on the Internet and findable, get there. If you haven’t reapportioned your funds so that you are spending more on marketing and less on perks, get there. Ditto print and online advertising: cut your print budget by 50% and put half of that into online marketing.

If you have a poorly performing Web site, get a better site, subscribe to marketing services that get you found. Install a lead capture system. Stop buying clicks and start buying presence and real leads. Put your Web address on everything. Strap on your armor and man the battlements, because I think that we are in for a siege of at least two years length, during which time all the people doing nothing but talking will be fed to the monster. Our industry is under siege just as surely as cheap gas is gone forever.

In professional sports, when a player is not tuned in to reality, he or she is said to "not have his/her head in the game."

Based on what I am seeing and hearing, there are way too many people out there in the real estate business ignoring the daily indicators that things are changing. Please get your heads in the game, folks, or you might wake up to find that someone who has their head in the game has waltzed in and put you on the sidelines by taking over a good portion of "your" marketplace. The time for action is here: protect your market and your business. Whether you are in Sioux Falls, San Francisco or Schenectady, the most efficient, lowest-cost producer of the most listings and sales is the one who will prosper. Make that you.