While prices continue to rise, existing-home sales fell in July for the sixth consecutive month and are down dramatically from a year ago, according to NAR's latest housing report.

You may think you should start spending right away on big-time marketing and expensive lead-generation tools. But when you're beginning your career in real estate, it's best to keep things simple and save your cash.

Websites, virtual staging, video tours and aerial photos are all among the latest tools for marketing real estate. "A real estate marketer's failure to stay up with the latest developments in real estate marketing means they could be left behind," broker Chris Bentley writes.

U.S. companies are looking to bring operations home from overseas, which will open new opportunities for commercial brokers, speakers at NAR's C5 Summit say.

More buyers are canceling sales for new-build and existing-home transactions amid fears of a recession, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting and Redfin. Higher mortgage rates mean that some buyers have failed to qualify, a factor driving some of the cancellations.

Mortgage applications for home purchases fell 1% during the week, bringing the total volume of mortgage applications down 2% over the previous week and demand to its lowest level since 2000, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with a conforming loan balance was down to 5.45% from last week's 5.47%, though it has not improved the volume of refinance applications, which declined 5% for the week.

Sonny Bringol, newly installed executive chairman of Farmers Bank in Tennessee, says he plans to greatly extend its presence as a mortgage lender with a full suite of products and expects the strategy to generate healthy returns, despite the slowdown affecting home buying and mortgage volumes. "If you can break even right now, you're successful. But you have to be around when [the next upswing] comes around. Those who exited the business in 2018 made nothing in 2020 and 2021," Bringol maintains.

Augmented and virtual reality, 5G and other mobile technologies are well-suited to help marketers engage with today's "Impatience Economy," suggests Roslyn Layton, Strand Consult's executive vice president. Layton uses Augie Fabela's "The Impatience Economy: How Social Retail Marketing™ Changes Everything" to recommend that marketers focus on building relevance and trust, focus on values, give customers more control with new technology and highlight services or products customers might not know.

Critics say that the Basic Allowance for Housing provided to service members by the Department of Defense is not sufficient to keep up with rising housing costs. In addition, a shortage in housing will take years for the department to address "through traditional military construction, given the federal budget cycle and the fact that military construction projects require congressional authorization and appropriation," says Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Pentagon spokesperson.

The Veterans Affairs Loan Informed Disclosure Act that Congress is considering would require comparisons between conventional financing, Federal Housing Administration and VA loans. Such disclosures would alert veterans to the benefits of VA loans, supporters say.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve's July policy meeting show that officials saw "little evidence to date that inflation pressures were subsiding" and exhibited a commitment to further action. The economic metrics released since the meeting have been somewhat contradictory, with year-over-year inflation numbers cooling but the job market staying strong.