NOTE All good things must end. May 3rd will mark my one year anniversary of Top Posts of the Day. It will also mark my last segment as I shift business focus. If you are interested in taking over please email me and let me know. I will export my RSS reader to you. Expect a 2-hour a day commitment.

1) Just Bought a Home; Did You Plan For Expenses? – Great post because most people do not really understand the true cost of home ownership.

2) Five best and five worst commercial real estate markets – Phoenix may be hotter than most of the country, but not when it comes to commercial real estate.

3) Four iPhone apps agents’ clients are probably using – If you know your client is an avid iPhone user you may want to know what they are using so you can speak their language.

4) NAR: 1994 Called, and it Wants its Photo Policy Back! – I thought NAR was supposed to look out for consumers not lazy agents? If 90+% of home buyers shop online why would you not require photos? How does a listing online without pictures help either the buyer or the seller?

5) Rebecca Jarvis: Got Evidence? – Rob takes apart a recent interview on CBS morning show about hiring real estate agents.

6) My first 10 days as a Realtor – you think you know, but you have no idea – Nice first 10 days, I don’t think, I know I didn’t even talk to a client in my first 10 days.

7) Just Launched: Facebook Like Plugin for Every Post on Your WP Blog! – Tomorrow you will be able to like this post, great plugin.

8) Hard Times for HOAs Could Mean Fewer Home Sales Due to Delinquent Fees – Late HOA dues can effect those who are not late and wanting to sell their home.

9) Your Self-Directed IRA is Possibly the Worst Mistake You Made?! – If you do not know what you are doing, get educated or you could pay the consequences.

10) USDA funding may not run out after all – HR 5017 passed today – Revenue neutral bill aims to make sure USDA does not keep running out of funds.

Today’s top 10 real estate blog posts of the day.

1) Bob Hale is sticking his neck out – who’s got his back? – This is a great start and I hope to see more associations start to implement it. Combine this with client feedback and we could really move the profession a long ways down the path in a good direction.

2) 5 Must-Have Products for the Virtual Real Estate Agent – These are five good tools you should have, but I think there may be some that are more important like DocuSign that are not on this list.

3) It’s Q2 … Do You Know Where Your Business Plan Is? – Are you staying on track? Do you even have a track to stay on?

4) Personal Branding: Defining Your Personal Values – What makes you who you are? Highlight that because people like doing business with people like themselves.

5) Grab Your Inner Tube: Short Sales are the Next Wave in Real Estate – A year ago it did not matter if you were representing buyers or sellers, it was the goal of most agents to avoid short sales. That is no longer possible.

6) Buying a Bank Owned Property Can Be Bumpy Ride – Patience is about the only thing you can do to control a bank owned property transaction.

7) Seven Things Your Agent Should Know About Your Mortgage Approval – This is good for agents to make sure they know in case their clients find it and ask.

8) Maxsell Real Estate features 24/7 Live Answering Phone System – Answering the phone makes all the difference in the world. I cannot tell you how many people are surprised when I answer my phone. It is often I hear wow an agent who knows where the answer button is.

9) Demonstrate expertise- embed a forum on your blog in ten seconds flat – I personally still like messages boards, but never thought of putting one on my site.

10) Ten Credit Do’s and Don’ts To Bear In Mind Prior To Getting Your Mortgage Loan – Make sure you tell your clients about these, there is nothing worse than finding out 2 weeks before close that your client just got a new truck and put is debt ration out of whack.

Today’s top 10 real estate posts of the day in no particular order.

1) Who Finds Homes? Buyers or Realtors? – I agree that for the most part the job of a real estate agent has shifted from finding a house to representing a buyer, and I think that is a good thing for the buyer because they know what they want a lot more than we know what they want.

2) 30 Seconds to More Real Estate Deals – I admit I do not have a good answer for this. But I know I need one so this is a good place to start.

3) #RTB | Raising the Bar | How High?!? – One broker is setting his bar high and I applaud him. Good discussion in the comments section too.

4) Real Estate Video Is Dead, Encore – Video is a game changer, and I like how Rob points to how important the story is. Some good examples included.

5) Chart : Foreclosures Per Household By State (March 2010) – Same old song and dance. Nevada, California, Arizona and Florida lead the world in foreclosures.

6) Banker’s Choose not to Swallow Obama’s Loan Modification Bitter Pill – Banks are unwilling to buy on because of how much it could cost them in the end.

7) Goldman fraud charges are just the beginning- this will get ugly – It starts with Goldman Sachs, but where does it end? Who is next?

8) Rob Reynar Talks Outsourced Assistants – If you are not using a virtual assistant, you really need to look into it. I have used one for about 9 months now and it is best investment I have made.

9) The threshold of accountability is accounting for things: Is this, finally, the CRM I’ll use? – I am always looking for new tools and Greg found one here that I am going to play with this week.

10) Loan Modifications; Obama Polls Americans on How to Overhaul Fannie and Freddie – Ok everyone go there and tell them to get government out of the mortgage business and to look at HEFI, that is how they can help.

Today’s Top 10 real estate posts of the day in no particular order

1) Hey Listing Agents…Help Us Help You! – The last couple of days I have been on a big #RTB kick. This is just one example. I understand REO listing agents are buys, but if you are that busy hire more staff to help you out. The seller, even if they are a bank, deserve better representation.

2) Real estate advertising in the language of benefits – What is your value proposition? And why is Marc watching commercials and not fast forwarding with his DVR?

3) Foreclosures skyrocket in first quarter, up 16% over Q1 2009 – Glad to see the foreclosure boom is over.

4) Affiliates vs. Affiliations – Advantage Broker or Customer? – This is really good. I worked for a large brokerage that had affiliates and I felt completely uncomfortable using them and in fact never did.

5)  Due Diligence and Contract Negotiation – Maybe the most comprehensive list of what goes into a contract and negotiations I have ever seen.

6) Adjustable Rate Mortgages Are An Absolute Steal Right Now. Have You Checked The Rates Lately? – First I am not a fan of ARMS at all and cannot think of many cases they are ever good. But wow that is a gap.

7) 15 Days Remaining for the Home Buyer Tax Credit – Tick tock time is getting short. If you want the tax credit it is time to get moving, be ready and don’t even think about a short sale.

8) Zillow Sucks and Forbes Sucks It Up – Don’t get on the bad side of Kristal, she will take you apart.

9) Blog Post SEO – How to Make an Individual Blog Post Rank Highly – Great advice here, make sure you read it if you are a blogger.

10) 9 Ways To Cutting Costs In Your Personal Finances And Real Estate Business – Who doesn’t like to save money?

Today’s Top 10 real estate posts of the day in no particular order.

1) Susan Penn’s Blog-What’s changed in HAFA 2010 Short Sales? “Deed-in-Lieu” – There were some big changes late in HAFA, one of them was upping the move on cost for the home owner from $1500 to $3000, and you can also get that for the deed-in-lieu.

2) Home Affordability Modification Program failing horribly – HAMP was a failure? Really? Only about 5% of those that were intended to receive help did so. But HAFA, that will be different right?

3) Top 10 Tips for Staging a Home – Staging is so important. It doesn’t need to cost thousands of dollars to do either.

4) Did You Know that FHA Mortgages are Assumable? – If rates skyrocket a few years from now when you are trying to sell your house this could be a big factor.

5) Locking Your Loan Rate – Most important part, get it in writing!

6) JP Morgan Chase Loan Modification? FAIL! – Seriously why do we help these people, they are a complete joke.

7) Transparency, Real Estate, and Consequences – It is a good thing Rob does not write more. It is always so good to read, but at the same time you need to set aside half an day for each post to read then re-read.

8) Building Momentum in Your Real Estate Investing Business – How do you get going when you are starting out in real estate investing, I mean really get going. Here are some tips to get the train rolling downhill.

9) Defending Your Home From Mortgage Rate Velocity – This is a subject we cover often, but something a lot of people still don’t realize. Rate sheets come out 2, 3, 4 or more times a day. That means rates change often. Make sure your buyer understands that.

10) Stupid Things Banks Say – Purely for entertainment purposes.

Today’s Top 10 real estate posts of the day in no particular order.

1) Apr. 13, 2010 – Mobile application patent fight – This is one of those ones that just does not pass the smell test for credibility. I can assure you I will not knowingly use a Smarter Agent product in the future and hope you don’t either.

2) Associations, please set minimum standards for MLS photos – For the consumer I say yes bring better standards, for my personal business I say don’t worry about it because I have a competitive edge with better pictures when I go on a listing presentation.

3) An Agent Bonus – Always a good topic, agent bonuses. Disclose. Disclose. Disclose. Then you never need to worry about the issue.

4) Part-time Realtor? Disclose it. – I read the piece and then read the comments and I really wasn’t sure how I felt about it until I got to Jim Duncan’s comment, and I think he nailed my concern for the consumer. And if the consumer is fine with that, then all sides can be happy. Maybe the consumer only wants to see houses nights and weekends and this works for them.

5) Getting Real – Truth in Advertising – This hits home for me, I recently went to show a house to an out of state buyer that had only one picture of the home, the front. In the comments it said “large kitchen.” Why was the kitchen so large? Because there was NOTHING there, no counters, cabinets, sinks, appliances, everything was stripped out. I was so upset at the agent had wasted my time and my agents. There should have been a note or a picture. I was so upset I even let the listing agents broker know about the issue.

6) Fitting Internet Marketing into an Agent’s Biz Flow – Dustin has pretty much hit the cycle on the head, the next part is how do you really work each phase of the cycle.

7) On work, busywork, hard work, and how to tell the difference – This is really good, so good in fact that I am probably going to reread it after I post this.

8) Question: Does the seller have to accept an offer of full asking price? – This question means something totally different in each market. The short answer is no of course, but In Phoenix where many homes on the market are bank owned this answer may be they will unlikely accept full price if the house is under $120,000 because there is a good chance there will be multiple offers and the list price is just the starting price in many cases.

9) Real Estate Websites Built on WordPress – 32 Examples of Realtor Blogs – I am always looking for some new ideas on making my site look better, changing themes and tinkering with it. Here is a slide share that shows you some good looking real estate sites. The key to remember is great looking does not always mean great functioning. But most of these sites achieve both.

10) Site speed is now an SEO issue: 3 things to do to speed up your website right now. – Now that Google is talking speed, here are some suggestions for your real estate blog.

Here is today’s list of top real estate posts in no particular order…

1) Federal Housing Administration to Accept eSignature for Real Estate Contracts – Finally there is closure on this issue.  Does FHA take Docusign signatures or not? Yes! Bookmark this so next time someone says they do not take them you have your ammunition ready.

2) Real Estate Coaching: Becoming Famous in a New Area – Forget the headline on this one, reason is you may say I am not new to my area why should I watch this. This post is relevant to ANYONE in real estate who is not doing the business volume they want. I think Coach Tom and just about anyone would be willing to bet you if you did this (2-3 hours a day) for a month you would have more business than you knew what to do with.

3) We’ve Come a Long Way Baby – Something you may not know about me, I am a history buff. When I was at the University of New Hampshire before I left for politics I was a history major with a concentration in early American history. That is one of the reasons I find things like this so fascinating.

4) Real Estate Professionals Pondering Wrong Question – Joe Manausa is becoming one of my must read bloggers. He is putting out a lot of good quality content. With the tax credit ending Joe points out there are only so many first-time buyers, we need to find a way to get move up buyers back in the market.

5) The Listing Interview: How To Get the Listing Even if Your Competition Charges Less – Who hasn’t had a situation where the seller was shopping commissions. Jennifer Allan puts together a great post here on how to combat that.

6) Growing Trend: Shared and Collaborative Office Spaces – Here in Phoenix we have RETT but there are other types of collaborative work environments as seen here.

7) Cash Flow: Real vs. Realtor – Easy lesson here, don’t pretend to know more than you do because those who really do know more will figure it out quickly.

8) Virtual BarCamp Presentation – The 1-2-1 Business Development Formula – Real estate is not rocket science. Take the advice from Coach Tom Ferry in number 2 and this good advice on how much time you should be spending in content creation and business development and you have a winner.

9) Home Inspection for “Informational Purposes?” Yeah right! – Like anything else if you have certain expectations make sure they are in the original contract.

10) Importance Of Long Tail Real Estate Keywords – You may never be able to rank on the top page of Google for “your city real estate” but pick a community or two in that city and now your chance of success is much higher.