Many Realtors have only seen rising markets and have never gone through a falling market.

Your associates are mostly lost. They are using the same strategies that they used in the big runup in 2001, 2002, 2003 and perhaps 2004 and 2005. But those strategies no longer work in today's falling market.

This article will help give you some ideas as to how you can make 2008 and 2009 your best years ever in real estate.

Warning: It preaches about how you can succeed by doing everything differently. If you are in a comfort zone and okay with where you are at, you may get a few ideas but you won't find this very interesting. If you are struggling and want to make some real money, you will have to learn some new skills and some new ways of doing things that are COMPLETELY OPPOSITE what you have learned.

When you read each secret, think on it for a minute. Maybe get a pad of paper and a pen right now and jot down some notes. Think about your current listings and current situations in light of what you are learning.

Secret #1: Stay ahead of the market when you price a listing

In a rising market, you start out high and then wait a bit. The market catches up with you. You look like a genius. Sometimes you may have to drop the listing price a bit. But ultimately that's all it takes.

Not so a falling market. Nowadays you have to start low. Real low. The market may be falling 1% or 2% a month where you are. I have no idea. But that isn't uncommon. You need to make sure that your buyer buys and that your buyer gets a loan approved. That means listing very, very cheap.

What you want is multiple offers. And yes, you can get them even in today's environment.

Secret #2: Gear everything to financing

You need to make sure your buyer gets the loan approved. If it's a short sale, do your own BPO (broker's price opinion) and come in as low as humanly possible. Yes, I know you do CMAs, so does everyone else. I'm talking about doing a full blown BPO so you can educate the appraiser or the broker who the lender sends out (in the case of a short sale).

Mastering short sales and the other 9 secrets for Realtors in this article is the key to making a fortune in a falling market.

Your numbers will ultimately have more to do to make or break the financing than anything else. You simply must track the loan and credit situation every bit as intensely as you track the buyer's inspection and other activities.

Secret #3: Take 30 day listings

In a rising market, listings are the name of the game. They still are to an extent. But not really. Listings cost you money and if they are unrealistic, then they just sit there costing you a lot of money. Direct small change in the form of MLS fees but bigger money in terms of time and attention. And if you aren't giving each listing time and attention, they cost you lost goodwill and badmouthing in your farm area.

I suggest very strongly that you take only 30 day listings. And you market the heck out of a listing as soon as you get it. And if it isn't in settlement in 30 days, you have to seriously question what you've been doing in the first place.

"I will sell your house in 30 days," you tell the seller. "I will invest my time and money for 30 days and then you're free to explore other options. How does that sound?"

You are putting the pressure on yourself and your seller to set a realistic price and get that house sold. The brain starts to engage in a different way. The brain is a goal-seeking device and it says, "brain, you've put your foot in it now. How are we gonna sell this house in 30 days?"

Secret #4: In pricing, it's what's sold that counts, not what's offered for sale

So many Realtors don't get the reality of the new falling market. That says, it's not what the neighbor across the street is asking for the house. It's what's sold that counts.

Without volume, price means nothing. In other words, it's transactions that count, not wishes. So when you are sitting down on a listing presentation, you are determining what listing price to recommend, you look at closed deals. And of course, discount for time if you can't find recent ones. That gives you a clue right away.

Secret #5: Nobody cares what your seller "needs to get"

The "Need to Gets" is the biggest enemy of selling your listing. A seller says "I have put so much money in my new kitchen, and I have these two loans…" Well, present the news to your seller: nobody cares.

All they care about is the seller being listed as the cheapest house of its type in the area. That will get the house sold. Anything else will just create another failed listing and discouraged seller and one more dusty for-sale sign sitting on a lawn along with all the others.

Nobody cares what your seller needs to get. All they care about is getting the best deal in the neighborhood. Price accordingly and you will sell in your 30 day listing window.

Secret #6: Pull out all the marketing stops

Once you've got your listing and it's priced as the best deal in the neighborhood, the next step is to market the heck out of the house during your 30 day listing.

Adjustable rates, impossibility of getting new financing, and falling values equals the biggest opportunity for Realtors in two decades. The author of this article was extensively quoted in the NY Times recently.

Sure, list it in the MLS. But now your work really starts.

Signs should be placed throughout the neighborhood and they should reflect the value that is to be found.

Email blasts through your title company rep to all the Realtors within 5 miles can be very useful.

Get real hardcopy flyers created and dropped to all those same Realtors within 5 miles. Why do this? Because it's repetition that counts. You want the Realtors to see what a value you have in two or three ways over a week or two. Then they will connect mentally with your listing and they are much more likely to present it to their buyer than they are if you just put it in the MLS and maybe do one mailing or one email.

Knock on doors as that presents a fine opportunity to generate interest. Approach apartment dwellers nearby and other homeowners. So often a house is sold this way rather than through another agent, and you get both sides of the commission of course.

Secret #7: Follow up with every Realtor who shows the property

Use your lockbox data to follow up with whoever shows the house. Call them and chat with them. You want to get their impression of the house and their buyer's impression. You can use that data to adjust the listing price, or adjust your MLS listing or your flyers, or make some small changes in the house.

I remember years ago I had a house I owned that simply would not sell. It was in the best neighborhood of a quite middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles, and that is always a tough neighborhood to sell in. But I followed my Secrets here and I found out from one of the Realtors who had shown the house two things: there was a smell coming from the back yard. And I could fix that smell by putting some lime down on the lawn. That tip helped me sell the house. It was inexpensive to do, and I would never have found out about it if I hadn't followed up with all the Realtors showing the house.

Secret #8: Create an event out of selling the house

Now with Secret #8, we get into what may be the biggest and best of all for Realtors and here it is.

Key point: It's must easier to publicize something if you make an event out of it. If you offer something all the time (like during a listing period), it's not of great interest. But if you offer it only during a single weekend, you can get what is called social proof working for you. What is social proof? It's the herd instinct, it's why we all want to go to the restaurant that is too crowded to accept our reservation.

There are two ways you can harness the immense power of social proofl.

One is you can have a broker's open house. Put together a simple lunch of cold cuts, bread, cole slaw, potato salad, and beverages. Everyone loves a free lunch and this still will get your associates out there. I am assuming you have priced the house to sell as the best deal in the neighborhood, and you have solved any glaring problems with the property that you can solve.

This will generate some quick buzz and often a buyer will come forward pretty quickly. The point is to exposre the house and generate some buzz. You must have priced the house to sell or you are wasting your money and time.

The second way to create an event is to pursue the 9 day house sale. You publicize an inspection weekend on the MLS. You do your flyers, your email blasts, your signs, and you advertise in the paper and on Craigslist and local real estate websites. You say "must sell to the highest offer Sunday night".

You market the heck out of that house but you don't open it up until the weekend. Then you try to have 30, 40 or 100 people go through the house and you get them to bid. Any bid, even $1 is fine. Sunday night, you call the bidders and do a telephone round robin and you arrive at the highest bid, working up in $500 or $1000 increments.

This does two wonderful things for you. First, it gets you a parade of buyers you can work to sell this and future listings. Nothing better in today's falling market than 30, 40 or 100 people, many of whom are buyers and many of whom do not have representation.

Second, it often sells the house and even gets a backup offer. There are details you need to learn on the 9 day house sale, as I call it, and I explain it further in my course Mortgage Relief Formula Pro, the bestselling course that explains everything about short sales, loan modifications, short sale listings, negotiating with the lender, and much more.

I don't know of anything more powerful today than the 9 Day House Sale for creating an event that can get buyers out of the woodwork.

Secret #9: Master the Short Sale

Short sales are a huge pain in the rear. They are complicated and take a lot of calendar time.

All true.

So why do I say you should master the short sale?

Because more and more sales are going to be short sales.

And they are not difficult. In fact, if you know what you are doing, they are very easy, much easier than a regular sale.

Yes, you heard that right. Short sales can be easier than regular sales. Here's why: Because with a short sale, your seller doesn't care about how much the sale brings in. Your seller is not an obstacle as he or she often is with a regular sale.

The tough part of a short sale is pricing the house to sell so that the lender approves the sale. And there is a lot of tedious time negotiating with the lender or lenders if the seller has two loans.

The way around that is to do three things: First, do your own BPO and make sure you sell the property for no less than 80% of the BPO. 85% even.

Second, make sure the buyer is able to be patient. Or find a different buyer. You MUST be picky as to who buys a short sale or else the deal will fall through after 30 days because the buyer has lost patience. It's far, far better to choose your buyer wisely even at a lower price than it is to accept a higher price from a buyer who must move in 30 days.

Third, hire an outside trusted firm or individual to do the short sale negotiating for you, especially if the seller has two loans. You will accept less commission if the lender won't pay the outside firm separately on the HUD-1, but it's worth it. You can sell the house, move on to the next deal, and have someone babysit the lender.

I work with a law firm that works with sellers and Realtors and we spend 15 hours on a deal, just negotiating with lenders and on hold and faxing and overnighting documents and so forth. It is possible that you can do all this while you pursue getting listings. But if you do, you should have someone else assisting you who can spend this time and knows what he or she is doing. The deal I have with the law firm is they charge $500 or sometimes a bit more and the rest of their fee comes from what the buyer brings in at closing.

There are short sale negotiating firms that charge a flat $500 fee or whatever. Find someone you can trust to do the legwork for you. So you can deal with the end of things connected with listing and selling real estate. And the negotiating person or firm you bring in handles the lender and all the paperwork and frustration there.

Short sales are the wave coming on right now. Ride that wave. It's a slam dunk to make a lot of money in short sales if you take the three things into account above — the BPO, finding the RIGHT buyer, and hiring an outside firm or person to do the negotiating.

Secret #10: Don't listen to what people tell you unless they've done 20 short sales in the last 6 months

I get more garbage I hear from people on short sales. Myths:

• You must miss payments to do a short sale
• So-and-so (name any lender) doesn't approve any short sales now
• Short sales will ruin your credit
• You have to pay all the money back to the lender
• You will owe a huge tax bill to the IRS

on and on and on. None of these are necessarily true. What is true is that you shouldn't listen to anyone who hasn't done a ton of short sales in the past 6 months. You know how people talk and hear this and then pass it along as gospel. They don't know what they're talking about and neither did the person they overheard.

Get your own information. Become an expert in this topic of selling distressed real estate.

A sales career is ultimately successful to the extent you are solving other people's problems. Today's problems are huge. Homeowners are extremely motivated to sell. Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to solve their distressed real estate problems. You do that by mastering the short sale and the other 9 secrets listed in this article.

And if you care to learn more…

Please watch this video on short sales and foreclosures. This is a screen shot — just type in your email and I'll get you to the real video. It's geared to homeowners and Realtors who want to know everything they can about short sales.