Educate your clients about the telltale signs of lead, asbestos and mold, and know how to help them properly remediate.

A frustrated real estate pro asks our ethics guru how to enhance communication when there's radio silence from the listings agent after an offer has been submitted.

Thirty percent of sales managers this year say they are heading teams of one to five people, compared with 18% last year, according to The Center for Sales Strategy's Media Sales Report. Consultants Stephanie Downs and Susan McCullin say ensuring a strong sales enablement process, taking non-selling activities off salespeople's plates and clearly delineating and prioritizing to-dos can help.

The parameters brands set for consumer text messaging should be akin to those used with friends, writes Postscript CEO Adam Turner. Among the six tips Turner offers are avoid getting too personal too quickly, steer clear of "spam territory" by ensuring the texts are important and of value, and don't communicate late at night or early in the morning.

Real estate professionals say Washington, D.C.'s profile is rising and property values are going up. The capital has "become a well-recognized luxury market," said Tom Anderson, president of Washington Fine Properties. "We've owned our company here for 25 years, the market and the price points have been going up and up."

Off-market home sales spiked in London in the fourth quarter, with the messaging platform WhatsApp being increasingly used to discretely share information on unlisted luxury properties, according to Hamptons International. "Sellers have been increasingly looking to test pricing quietly without leaving a digital footprint, particularly if they chose to take their home off the market with a view to trying again in six or 12 months' time," said David Fell of Hamptons.

Hundreds of employees have been let go at Flagstar Bank as it winds down its mortgage business and merges with New York Community Bancorp, sources say. The move is part of the bank's plans to shutter its consumer mortgage operation, sources note.

Show that as a leader, you understand there's more to an agent or employee than what they bring to the table for your brokerage.

A summer groundbreaking is planned for a project to bring 70 affordable units to New Orleans. The units are geared toward military veterans and older adults.

Don't expect 2023 to finish like 2022, where the economy ended on a better note than most forecasters expected. "Forecasters say that growth is likely to slow, however, and possibly even reverse in the months to come, as consumers and businesses continue to deal with rising prices, as well as the Federal Reserve's aggressive push to boost interest rates," Scott Horsley writes.