The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas reports that some agents are battling high gas prices with two wheels.

"Obviously, I can't take clients house-hunting on the back of my bike, but I do a lot of scouting, previewing, flier-running and business related errands on a daily basis," said Tami Fagan, a Realtor in Fayetteville, Ark., who increasingly favors a motorcycle over her Mazda minivan in real estate work, the article states.

"It is doable now that the weather is getting warmer, and though it doesn't do much for my hairdo, my pocketbook loves it."

The Morning News article also noted that another agent in Springdale, Ark., parks his Land Rover in favor of a motorcycle, when possible, and another agent traded in a sport-utility vehicle for a Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid.

Inman's Jessica Swesey asked readers to weigh in on the rising cost of driving (see the blog post here), with one real estate professional reporting a $61 fill-up and another working in a multiple listing service area that spans 10,000 square miles.

We've seen real estate companies that build a brand around a fleet of Mini Coopers and Volkswagen Beetles. Which real estate company will be the first to use a fleet of Harleys? Note: MotorcycleRealtor.com is already taken (it belongs to Paul Morand, a Florida Realtor). And then there's BikerAgents.com, a "Referral Network for RE/MAX Biker Agents."

If sponsoring an event for dog lovers is a sophisticated way to drum up business for real estate agents (see post below), this Washington Times story suggests the perils of a more blunt marketing technique: spamming.

Seems a mortgage originator recently made the mistake of e-mailing FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair a pop-up ad offering her $400 monthly payments on a $175,000 loan. The article doesn't say say whether the offer was legit or whether the originator is in hot water, but does a nice job of exploring whether lax regulatory standards helped create the "dry forest" that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently told lawmakers ignited into the mortgage meltdown.

Why is San Francisco Bay Area luxury real estate firm Pacific Union GMAC Real Estate sponsoring "Save Your Dog Day" -- an event where dog owners can get a microchip implanted in Fido and a "rabies shot and amnesty" for unlicensed pooches?

Well, it's "a fun and helpful community event that brings people and their pets together" and Pacific Union is proud to be the sponsor, the company says in a press release.

Given the hassles pet owners often face as renters and the location of the June 14 event -- Danville, an upscale suburb east of San Francisco -- it's safe to say most of the people showing up will probably be home owners, and potential clients.

Pacific Union, which has offices in six Bay Area counties, obviously knows a thing or two about drumming up business to keep its agents busy.

DALLAS – Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com, points to five challenges that lie ahead in online real estate:

1. Fragmentation: Samuelson during a real estate journalism conference Friday cited a survey conducted last summer that shows 20 percent of real estate consumers visit seven or more real estate Web sites when researching for one transaction. We still have too many niche applications specializing in one small aspect of transactions, he said.

2. Comprehensiveness and currency: Many listings sites only have part of the available property listings. Consumers are left to chance that their dream home is included in this partial view. Many sites still update only once every 24 hours, and consumers are sometimes getting stale information.

3. Poor market indicators: “I think most (real estate) sites do a very bad job of telling consumers leading indicators of where the market is headed,” Samuelson said.

4. Insufficient consumer focus: Many sites still aren’t making things easier for consumers.

5. Lagging in mobile: Over the next 10 years, more consumers will access the Internet from mobile devices than from PCs, Samuelson predicts. There hasn’t been much successful innovation in real estate on this front. He expects the iPhone will stimulate more development.

Samuelson’s predictions going forward? He expects more real estate sites will focus on one-stop shopping and comprehensive information, more sites will offer better transparency of information to consumers, and more sites will focus on the quality of information they provide.

What’s Realtor.com up to? The site’s been going through a series of updates and will be unveiling more features at the National Association of Realtors Midyear Conference in Washington, D.C., next week.

Samuelson also mentioned that Realtor.com just opened a big research and development center in Silicon Valley. Do we smell some serious movement coming from NAR’s online darling?

Got an hour and 20 minutes to kill? Amaze your friends -- after you watch this video, you WILL be able to explain "How We Got Into this Mortgage Mess and How We Get Out."

From an April 23 presentation at the Princeton Club of New York by Alan Blinder, professor of economics and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; Zanny Minton Beddoes, economics editor at The Economist magazine; and Peter Orszag, director, Congressional Budget Office.

Some builders are offering price guarantees to new home buyers -- assurances that they will be protected from falling prices not only up to closing, but for a year, two years, or more.

Reno, Nev.-based Pacifc West says its guarantee is good until all the homes in a development are sold.

"Our Life-of-The-Project Price Guarantee is the best in the industry, bar none," the company claims. "Unlike other guarantees that last 30 days or 90 days, ours lasts for as long as your community is selling new homes. If we do reduce the base price of your home model in your community below our guaranteed pricing, we'll write you a check for the entire differece."

Companies offering two-year guarantees include Signature Properties, and CNH Homes, while Cornerstone Homes offers a 12-month guarantee.

The fine print in such offers may specify -- as does Pacific West's "Life of The Project Price Guarantee" -- that they expire when the last home with the same floor plan in a development is sold, or, more ominously, if "all such floor plans are withdrawn from sale." And, of course, if a builder goes out of business, well...

Bill Sumski, managing director for Paladin Pacific LLC, noted the trend at the annual Fisher Center Real Estate Conference in San Francisco this week (see Inman News story). Sumski that while builders are slashing prices to compete with foreclosure properties, buyers dry up when the market is headed down. "There is a great fear about making a large purchase right now," he said.

You might recall another recent Inman News story about an outfit in Utah, EquityLock Financial Inc., that sells 15-year contracts as a hedge against falling home prices. The contracts, which aren't available in the riskiest markets, are being marketed to developers and builders for 1.5 percent to 2 percent of a home's sale price.

Signature Properties is offering its "Live Secure" guarantee on homes in some California markets where prices have fallen hard, including Sacramento and Oakland. Pacific West says it's offering its "Life of the Project" guarantee in Reno and all but one of its projects in California, and has already seen a boost in sales.

Some real estate agents and brokers are going to great lengths to boost business these days in searching for overseas buyers.

Any stories you care to share about efforts to market properties and services internationally? What is the state of foreign demand for U.S. property in your market area?

Move Inc., which operates the most highly trafficked real estate search site in the country, reported a $4.6 million net loss in the first quarter and has canceled a project that had been led by the company's former Realtor.com president (watch Inman News for related story).

It has been a tough week in earnings for other publicly traded industry players, too. Yesterday, real estate brokerage company ZipRealty, which has operations in 34 markets in 19 states and Washington, D.C., announced a $7.3 million net loss in the first quarter. And the day before, national online real estate marketing company HouseValues Inc. reported a quarterly loss of $1.2 million.

Move announced in March that Allan Dalton, former president for Realtor.com, had "voluntarily resigned" his position with a secretive venture at Move for which the company had offered only nebulous descriptions during earnings presentations.

So it is perhaps no surprise the company has canceled this venture ... whatever it was. David Lereah, former chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, had also been teamed with Dalton on that venture, which Move officials had at one time referred to as a "transformational" project for the company.

Meanwhile, Move officials announced an upgraded automated home valuation tool that will couple information about active for-sale homes, recently sold homes and the real estate professionals who are selling them or have sold them.

If you haven't joined the debate over HUD's proposed changes to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), you've got another month to dive into an issue that could transform the way real estate is bought and sold. At the request of the industry -- backed by a letter signed by 148 members of Congress -- HUD has extended the public comment period on its proposed changes to RESPA from May 13 to June 12 (see story).

On March 14, HUD proposed simplifying loan disclosures and creating incentives for packaging settlement services like title insurance with mortgage loans, which the department estimated could save consumers $8.35 billion a year.

The last time HUD tried to tinker with RESPA, there was such an uproar over packaging that HUD was forced to withdraw its plan. After holding industry roundtables and conducting extensive consumer testing of simplified disclosures, HUD came back almost four years later with a new plan that includes more subtle incentives for packaging (HUD is no longer promising there will be a "safe harbor" from prosecution under RESPA's anti-kickback provisions).

But those and other aspects of the proposed RESPA rule change (including lengthy scripts to be read at closing) have stirred up serious debate. To get a taste of where some people stand on the issues, check out the RESPA reform group in the Community section at Inman.com.

You'll see that some see HUD's proposal as an opportunity for settlement services providers like title agents who want to compete for business by offering consumers the best services and price -- as opposed to wooing industry professionals who can generate referrals for them, such as real estate brokers and builders. Supporters tend to agree with HUD's analysis that the rule changes will encourage homebuyers to shop around for settlement services, and there are already some Web sites cropping up to help them do just that (see story).

Some folks in this camp are worried that industry giants who like the way business is often conducted today -- between real estate professionals, instead of between settlement service providers and consumers -- will succeed in shooting down HUD's latest attempt at "RESPA reform."

But others fear the rule changes could slam the door shut on small, independent settlement services providers. Lenders, they say, will be more likely to make package deals for settlement services with big companies or steer homebuyers to affiliated businesses they have an ownership interest in. Instead of saving consumers money, some critics say, the rule changes will help bigger players boost profits at the expense of small, independent companies.

The American Land Title Association, which has drawn up a laundry list of issues its members have with HUD's proposal, helped organize the push for an extended comment period.

ALTA says its Web-based "action center" helped generate nearly 3,000 letters to members of Congress, asking that the public comment period to be extended by 60 days (which, with the November election fast approaching, might have left the issuance of a final rule up to the next administration).

The members of Congress who drafted the letter to HUD -- Representatives Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, and Judy Biggert, R-Ill. -- organized a similar campaign in 2004 that eventually resulted in HUD withdrawing its proposed rule change (a Hinojosa aide said at the time the goal was to allow for public comment, not to kill HUD's RESPA reform efforts).

Back in 2004, Hinojosa and Biggert convinced 226 lawmakers to sign a letter to the Office of Management and Budget, complaining that HUD had issued a final rule without an opportunity for additional public comment.

This time, 148 members of Congress signed a May 5 letter asking HUD to extend the comment period by 60 days. Democrats outnumbered Republicans 84 to 64, and prominent Democrats who signed the letter included Dennis Kucinich, Rahm Emanuel, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee and Jesse Jackson Jr.

While HUD agreed to an extra 30 days of public comment (rather than the 60 requested), Deputy Secretary Roy Bernardi insists HUD remains committed to finalizing a rule before President Bush leaves office.

ALTA CEO Kurt Pfotenhauer said in a statement that while the group "would have preferred a 60-day extension, we will use the time allotted to conduct a more thorough review of the proposal and its impacts on the title industry in order to provide feedback to HUD that is meaningful and helpful."

Real estate brokerage company ZipRealty reported in its first-quarter earnings today that real estate transactions involving short sales, foreclosures and real estate-owned (REO) properties have grown to represent over a 40 percent share of total transactions in some market areas.

The company reported that it closed more sales in the first quarter than in the same quarter last year, though the dollar volume actually declined -- in part due to the growth in handling these types of sales.

"Contributing to our performance was a modest increase in transactions at lower average prices, due in part to a shift toward less traditional transactions including foreclosure, bank REO and short sale transactions," reported Pat Lashinsky, ZipRealty president and CEO.

At a real estate conference conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Scott Ouellette, executive vice president for LandCap Partners, a land investment company, said he's heard that agents in a market in northern Los Angeles County "are only showing REO property" because that is a very active segment of the market.

Foreclosure properties, including REOS, could account for 25 percent of all home sales this year, said James J. Saccacio, chairman and CEO for foreclosure data company RealtyTrac, who spoke at the same conference.

How big a share of the market are REOs, foreclosures and short sales in your market area now, and how large do you expect this share will get?