Agents and brokers know first-hand how high home prices plague their individual communities. Be ready to offer unique and necessary solutions.

You can't be everything to everyone. Here's how to narrow your focus and choose the customers you want to work with.

Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz.com co-founder, details requisite media kit elements and highlights five corporate productions that offer valuable lessons in branding and credibility building. Among the five examples is Airbnb's easy-to-navigate online hub that offers for timely information.

Persuasive language leads people to share content, listen to advice and buy products, according to linguistics research. The three most important elements for marketing are concreteness or specifics, confidence, and agency and identity—or who is in charge and how people define themselves, writes Michael Stelzner.

A part of the wellness movement, this design trend aims to satisfy our innate desire for greater connection to nature.

Gray-painted facades are gaining popularity, design experts say, and social media posts by celebrity couple Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds showcase the trend. "Another huge benefit of gray is that it does not show dirt or dust," master gardener Joanna VonBergen says.

Silicon Valley Bank's collapse should prompt employers to create contingency plans to shield payrolls in a similar crisis, says Matthew Kim, founder and CEO of an insurance technology company. Immediate changes might be pausing projects or considering layoffs, while long-term shifts could involve such expenses as health care, technology or office space, Kim suggests.

The Washington House has passed a measure that would enable cities to build multi-family dwellings on residential lots as a way to increase middle housing stock. "Washington is experiencing a housing shortage, which is culminating in a housing crisis," state Rep. Jessica Bateman says.

Policymakers and industry leaders discuss possible affordability and inventory solutions at NAR's Policy Forum.

Accessing financing could become more challenging for the commercial real estate sector in the wake of recent bank failures, and there may be impacts as commercial mortgage loans mature or companies seek financing for new development, analysts say. However, they note that conditions are very different than they were during the global financial crisis. Despite short-term effects, "recent events have not fundamentally altered the overall conditions facing banks," said Abby Corbett of Cushman & Wakefield.