Hi, friends. Melissa Zavala here. Your receving this blog in your email inbox and maybe you are wondering why I haven’t written anything recently. But, the truth is that I have been writing and have lots of great short sale tips and tools but…. they have moved and maybe you didn’t receive the ‘Just moved’ postcard.

We have recently launched of our newly improved website complete with the latest short sale news, my most excellent blog posts, and the Exclusive Short Sale Expeditor® Member Resource Center.

If you receive my thought-provoking and dynamic blog posts via email, you will need to create a new subscription on the newly updated Short Sale Expeditor website.

Existing Email Subscribers:
Click here to subscribe and to continue to receive the blog posts via email.

Existing Subscribers via RSS:
Click here to continue to gain access to the blog via RSS feed.

2011 will likely be a busy year for those working short sales and foreclosures. If you want to keep up with the latest news in the short sale arena, don’t forget to follow the Short Sale Expeditor®. Additionally, our office already has several FREE live and online events scheduled for the coming weeks. If you want to learn more about mastering the short sale, please join us for one of our upcoming events. But, don’t delay. With the New Year has come a renewed interest in getting to work. As such, many of our events only have a few seats remaining!

P.S. For those of you who have a membership and password for the old Short Sale Expeditor website, you should have already received an email with your password and login for our new Member Page. If you have not, please contact us.

Great news for short sale aficionados in California and beyond. (No, I am not talking about Senate Bill 931.) I’m talking about Short Sale Expeditor® and the launch of our newly improved website complete with the latest short sale news, Melissa’s most excellent blog posts, and the Exclusive Short Sale Expeditor® Member Resource Center.

If you receive Melissa’s thought-provoking and dynamic blog posts via email, you will need to create a new subscription on the newly updated Short Sale Expeditor website.

Existing Email Subscribers:
Click here to subscribe and to continue to receive the blog posts via email.

Existing Subscribers via RSS:
Click here to continue to gain access to the blog via RSS feed.

2011 will likely be a busy year for those working short sales and foreclosures. If you want to keep up with the latest news in the short sale arena, don’t forget to follow the Short Sale Expeditor®. Additionally, our office already has several FREE live and online events scheduled for the coming weeks. If you want to learn more about mastering the short sale, please join us for one of our upcoming events. But, don’t delay. With the New Year comes a renewed interest in getting to work. As such, many of our events only have a few seats remaining!

Happy New Year. Wishing you nothing but the best for 2011.

P.S. For those of you who have a membership and password for the old Short Sale Expeditor website, you should have already received an email with your password and login for our new Member Page. If you have not, please contact us.

I’ve just been looking over Google Analytics to see what was popular on my blog in 2010. It’s surprising to me because some of the posts that I expected to rank got very few hits. But, you asked for it and you got it! Here are my top five  for 2010. Can you guess what they are about? Bingo! Short Sales

5. Bank of America, Equator, and the Short Sale Counter Offer This post explains some facts about the Equator process à la everyone’s favorite major lending institution.

4.  Postponing a Trustee’s Sale: Is it Possible? This post follows my antics as I attempt to postpone a handful of foreclosure auctions. Was I 100% successful? You’ll have to read the post to find out.

3. California Short Sale Sellers Will Love these Two Bills—if they Pass This post reviews both Senate Bills 1178 and 931. Since August (when the post was written), Senate Bill 931 passed and is effective on January 3, 2011.

2.  Postponement of a Wells Fargo Foreclosure – New Policies Short sale listing agents were thrilled to hear that there is actually a policy for foreclosure postponement at Wells Fargo. But, can the short sale negotiator (or listing agent) successfully jump through all those hoops? Read and find out.

The number one most popular blog post written in 2010 by Melissa Zavala is…

1.  Deficiency Judgments and Short Sales This post was prompted by a comment from a fellow short sale aficionado and real estate Broker, Bryant Tutas of Poinciana, Florida, who mentioned (in a blog post comment) that the most common question that he is asked by short sale sellers is with regard to the potential for deficiency judgment.

While I do not claim to have as exciting a Top Ten List (or even a Top Five) as David Letterman, these posts receiving high accolades and lots of traffic in 2010.

Hope you enjoy them. I wish you nothing but success and good health in 2011!

Photo: flickr creative commons by klynslis

This is my final post in a series about the modifications that many of us may need to make so that we can really gain control of our business in 2011. The series is really about reinventing yourself—making changes to the way you do business now in order to see some real lasting change in the coming year and beyond. I make jokes and call it a nip and tuck. Some of us may just need a little minor cosmetic work, and others may need a more thorough overhaul. Here are a few final tips for completing your real estate makeover:

Tell Your Story Differently One of the most important pieces of reinventing yourself is to talk differently. The way you view yourself must change before you can change the perception of others. How do you want others to see you? How do you want to view yourself from this point forward?

I always make jokes about Pigpen. Do you remember Pigpen from the Peanuts series. As he walked, I always got the impression that his dust and dirt would settle on those around him. If you act like Pigpen, the gloom and doom of the current real estate market may settle on prospective clients. And, that is something that you do not want to happen.

Create a New Personal Brand As you start talking and acting differently, you will realize that you are defining yourself differently. Part of the process of reinventing yourself is to use this change to create a new personal brand. Are you moving from being mediocre to awesome and tech savvy? Make changes and then create a tagline that embodies those changes.

One of the old school real estate trainers used to suggest that if you cannot think of a tagline, use three powerful words to convey your message. Honesty, Trust, Character, Success, and Results are just a few words that you can put together to convey a message about your personal brand.

Work Hard, Build Trust, Create Lasting Change I recently participated in a 31-day blogging challenge where we were to record all of the things that we do daily to generate business for the coming year. Many of the readers of my posts commented that I worked so hard that it was making them tired.

But, I have to be truthful and tell you that once I reinvented myself, I have seen lasting change and built a great amount of credibility through blogging, radio and newspaper interviews, workshops and seminars among other things.

As you start to put pieces into place, you will build credibility with others. Be consistent and patient in the way you approach things. Accomplish one goal at a time and start to build up to an image that you are happy with. You can reinvent yourself if you commit to a specific personal vision and create a consistent strategy that you can use to achieve it. Don’t rely on the anti-aging creams that you can buy over the counter. Reinventing your career takes more than just a quick fix. It takes hard work and a lot of persistence.

Read my previous posts about the real estate nip and tuck:

Jumpstart your Real Estate Career in 2011 – Post 1

Real Estate Makeover – Post 2

Real Estate Makeover – Post 3

Photo: flickr creative commons by HansJE

One of my kids recently completed a stint on local robotics team that was organized through school. At a event, the leaders reviewed the core values of the robotics organization. Most of the parents were snoozing, but I was listening. And, one of those core values struck me and I cannot get it out of my head.

“We honor the spirit of friendly competition.”

As I think about the words ‘friendly competition’, I think about the real estate business, and other businesses in general. As Realtors®, do we honor the spirit of friendly competition? Do we recognize the need to pay it forward by perhaps alerting a colleague when his for sale sign has flown down the street? Or, do we ignore the sign and keep driving—thinking how great it is that nobody can see that sign. Maybe your house will sell instead?

Competition is what makes us better. It is what forces us to be the best that we can be. If I were running in a race and nobody was running next to me, what motivation would I have to run as fast as possible? On the other hand, with competitors, we are compelled to always put our best foot forward and be the best that we can be.

I’ve written several posts about ways to get ahead of the game and prepare for the New Year. I’ve written about reinventing the way you do business, and I have also written about really, truly embracing the short sale transaction.

Let me also propose a New Year’s resolution:

Let’s honor the spirit of friendly competition. And, while we are at it, let’s display gracious professionalism in everything we do. And, of course, let’s recognize that it is important to have fun. If you do not enjoy what you do, what’s the point of doing it?

Photo: flickr creative commons by ricardodiaz