When I was sitting with Steve Morris a couple of years ago we were having a discussion about how fast the Florida market dropped. It was his opinion that Sun Belt areas like Florida that fell first and fell hard would also be the areas to come back first and swiftly before the rest of the Country. I could not agree more. There are literally millions of baby boomers, snowbirds and investors that have been sitting in the sidelines waiting and watching. When the trigger goes off I believe we are going to see a drastic change. They want to buy and live in Florida. There are starting to be a lot of positive signs out there. Are you ready??? The buyers are coming from the Internet. Every office needs some form of lead generation system like Market Leader ( Realty Generator). If you are NOT seeing a drastic increase in buyers, you do not have a good lead generation system in place. Agents want and need leads. If you can provide leads, good qualified leads, recruiting is easy. Our top offices prove this.

The following article was forwarded to me by Jessie Turner our Director of Business Development for EXIT Realty Florida. It talks about five areas of Florida being in the top ten for America. Which means all of Florida is among the top.

Some of the Sunbelt cities hardest-hit by the housing bust could get a boost from a traditional flock of migrants — snowbirds and retirees — as well as residents of nearby bigger cities looking for cheaper housing.

Real estate listings site Trulia.com says a slew of metropolitan areas in Florida and California boast the highest proportion of home searches from people outside the area as compared to local residents searching for property elsewhere.

In an analysis of about 100 million searches on the site from July 1 through Sept. 30, Trulia tallied the location of users and where they were looking for homes.

All of the top 10 cities "picking up strength" are in the Sun Belt. Florida dominates the list with five snow bird hubs in the top 10: the North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota area (No.1), Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach (No. 4), Cape Coral-Fort Myers (No. 5), West Palm Beach-Boca Raton (No. 6), and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford (No. 10).

In Bradenton a little over six times as many people from outside the area were looking for properties there as the number of people living there looking for properties elsewhere; Fort Lauderdale had a ratio of 2.15 and West Palm Beach 2.09. Kolko says search data indicates that east coast Florida cities like Fort Lauderdale garner the most interest from Northeasterners, particularly those hailing from the New York City area; west coast Florida cities like Bradenton get high property search traffic from Midwesterners, particularly among Chicagoan

Once again: I hope you are ready. I hope you have someone in place recruiting full time. And I hope you have systems in place. Agents want and need leads. We are full service real estate offices...ARE YOU? Agents can go to 100% Companies to get nothing.

If you need help getting anything in place, please call the Regional office. We are here to help.

Be ready, catch and ride the wave. It's coming!