Thursday, May 5, 2011 | Edited by Daniel Moores
Buying Beats Renting in 80 Percent of U.S. Cities

Thanks to falling home prices and rising rents, would-be home buyers have the upper hand this house-hunting season. In nearly 4 out of 5 major U.S. cities, it's now cheaper to buy a home than to rent. That's up from 72 percent of cities last quarter, based on the Rent vs. Buy Index released by online real estate resource Trulia.

"With home prices nearing a double-dip and more foreclosures expected to flood the housing market over the next two years, the decision between renting and buying a home across most of the country has clearly moved in favor of buying," said Ken Shuman, head of communications at Trulia, in a press release. "As we head into the summer buying season, those looking to buy a home should be encouraged by improvements in the market and feel optimistic about their chances of finding an affordable home, much more so than in previous years."

Areas with the most affordable housing market conditions tend to be cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, including Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Miami. Meanwhile, those with more affordable rental markets included New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Omaha, San Jose, and Detroit had some of the largest quarter-over-quarter jumps in favor of homeownership.

Despite the overwhelming data supporting home buying this season, experts emphasize that above all, the real estate market is local. "This metric is a good baseline for the rent versus buy decision, but it doesn't capture everything," says Jonathan Miller, president of New York City-based Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers. "Locally, it may be cheaper to buy then rent, but that doesn't speak to your investment. In other words, how many years before I can 'get above water,' or see a return?"

The time factor is one of many stumbling blocks preventing house hunters from making the jump from window shoppers to homeowners, Miller says. During the housing boom, homeowners were virtually guaranteed to make money or at least break even on their home sales, regardless of the period they owned the home. In today's market, experts see home prices appreciating much slower, therefore home owners will have to make a longer commitment to their housing investments than in previous years. "The future upside is much farther down the road," he says. "You're looking at five, maybe 10 years out of this sort of rocky bottom."

Until consumers regain confidence in the housing market and economy, Miller and others expect the rental market will continue to benefit from apprehensive house hunters. "There's been some erosion in attitudes toward homeownership," says Eric Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. "There's two parts to the home buying decision: the will and the way."

Belsky says the spike in home prices and increased housing market activity following the first-time home buyer tax credit in 2010 demonstrates pent-up demand, but that the market isn't currently providing enough incentive for house hunters to make a move. "The 'way' right now is really being blocked by the underwriting standards being applied to loans," he says. Even if some of the slack in the market tightens, the rebound won't be as strong as it would otherwise have been, Belsky says, primarily because many would-be home buyers won't be able to qualify for a loan with favorable terms.

Despite the numerous obstacles for prospective home buyers, experts remain confident that improving employment and economic data will breathe life into the housing market this spring and summer. More Americans signed contracts to buy homes in March, according to the National Association of Realtors' pending homes sales index -- up 5.1 percent -- a signal that could mean more house hunters are snapping up bargains. "We're sort of in that in-between phase," says Heather Fernandez, vice president of marketing at Trulia. "People aren't running out to buy that dream house yet because they're not that confident. But we're starting to see consumer confidence shift, people are more interested in home buying, rental rates are still high, and therefore, just based on the numbers, increasingly homeownership is becoming more affordable across the U.S."

(Source: U.S. News & World Report, 5/03/11)
Walgreens, CVS, RiteAid Expand Clinic Offerings

Your local drug store really wants to take your temperature: Leading chains are stepping up the pace of new services offered in their retail clinics, in an attempt to woo new customers with their convenience.

Walgreens just announced that it will now have daily testing available for cholesterol and blood glucose at more than 1,400 pharmacies in 33 states -- with each test coming with a free-blood pressure screening.

MinuteClinic, the CVS-owned clinic that is currently the largest provider of retail-based medical services in the U.S., now says it will offer Vitamin B-12 injections and the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination.

And Rite Aid is promoting its new ability to vaccinate patients over the age of 50 against shingles, thanks to an expanded age eligibility from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In addition, it's now offering whooping cough vaccines to parents in California, at some 500 pharmacies.

Sales at these clinics have been growing, up to $733.4 million this year -- an increase of 81% per year since 2005, according to a new report from independent healthcare market research firm Kalorama Information. And they are "likely to become a durable part of the healthcare system," the firm says in its report, although the rate of expansion has slowed.

The research company says the growth has come despite the recession, and despite some attempts by state legislatures to curtail retail clinic operations. "For example, Florida limits a physician to supervising only one clinic, while North Carolina's law restricts physicians to two supervisees, which could have the same effect," it says. "These laws could go to the heart of the retail clinic concept, which is that some cost savings will come from using nurse practitioners instead of physicians. Massachusetts has regulated what conditions can be treated in clinics and limits immunizations of children to flu shots only. New York State is investigating whether retail clinics steer customers towards the in-store pharmacy, and is among several states considering a ban on tobacco sales where a retail location has a clinic."

The report says that both the lack of federal intervention in retail clinics and the failure of more states to pass retail clinic laws "are indicators that the clinics right now have not lived up to the fears of opponents. If several cases of negligent care arose that could be tied specifically to the retail clinics' unique business model, it might accelerate legislative action."

(Source: Marketing Daily, 05/02/11)
Formula Changes For Determining Newspaper Circulation Figures

The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times Rank as Three Largest Weekday Papers

The Wall Street Journal has retained its crown as the country's largest weekday newspaper, reporting total average circulation of 2.1 million over the six months ending in March, followed by USA Today at 1.8 million and The New York Times at 916,911.

The Journal increased its average weekday circulation by 1.2% from the six months ending in March 2010, while USA Today edged up 0.1% and The Times declined 3.6%.

The Journal's total was aided by its paid digital circulation, which increased 21.9% to 504,734, while its weekday print circulation slipped 3.9% to 1,613,062.

USA Today's circulation increased year-over-year for the first time since September 2008.

What you can't get from the new round of figures, however, is the usual sense from reports past of how overall newspaper circulation has changed since the equivalent period a year earlier.

That's because The Audit Bureau of Circulations, whose board is composed of advertisers and newspapers, has changed the rules. Instead of reporting total paid circulation, which required that readers paid one way or another, newspapers now report total average circulation, including editions under different names that publish at least weekly -- as long as they are labeled to include the word 'edition' -- such as commuter or alternative language papers.

The 10th-largest weekday paper in the current report, for example, is the Chicago Sun-Times, whose 419,407 average Monday-through-Friday circulation includes 168,299 copies attributed to branded editions. In the report a year ago, the Chicago Sun-Times ranked 17th with average weekday circulation of 268,803.

Complimentary copies ordered by businesses such as hotels, airlines and beauty salons used to count as unpaid; under the new rules they count toward "total average circulation" under a new "verified" category.

But not all the changes will help newspapers increase their totals. Copies distributed in an uncontrolled environment such as a festival formerly qualified as a kind of paid circulation, but now are called unpaid and cannot be counted toward total average circulation.

For many papers, however, their top-line circulation figures include exactly or roughly the same circulation sources as before.

"The new definitions and formats reflect changes in the way publishers market their newspapers to readers, allowing newspaper companies to more accurately portray the powerful audiences they deliver across a multitude of print, digital and mobile platforms," said John Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, in a statement.

(Source: Advertising Age, 05/03/11)

Daily Sales Tip: The Goal of Cold Calling

The primary goal of cold calling is to find and qualify prospects. The only way to perform this task correctly is to measure prospects against a customer profile for your business. This means that before you make a cold call, you must have a clearly defined profile of who qualifies as a prospect.

This is important, because if you don't have a target customer profile, you'll be wasting time with cold calling. Think of it this way: If you are sent to the grocery store to bring back tomatoes, can you tell ripe ones from rotten ones? If you can't tell the difference, you aren't qualified to pick tomatoes. The same is true with trying to pick good prospects and determine if they are good or not.

If you went cold calling and came back with rotten contacts that don't match your customer profile, you will have wasted your time. And here is where it gets a little tricky, depending on your business. There is an expected ratio of who qualifies as an ideal prospect. In many cases, there are more duds than prospects when cold calling, which means you will need to filter through a lot of contacts to find good ones. This is perfectly fine, and the better you are at filtering your prospects the easier cold calling becomes.

Source: Sales consultant Steve Martinez

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