Florida real estate commissions are steadily falling; and the oft-cited, oft-debated industry standard of 6 percent is becoming a distant memory, according to little-noticed numbers the nation’s largest real estate broker released this month.

Realogy Corp.’s annual report shows that the average ”commission side” - the amount paid to either the seller’s or buyer’s agent - dipped below 2.5 percent in 2006.

Assuming that agents for both sides equally split commissions, that means the average commission was less than 5 percent.

”That’s good news,” said Stephen Brobeck, head of the Consumer Federation of America, a group that has criticized real estate commissions. “It shows consumers are increasingly negotiating.”

A Los Angeles real estate firm is buying a group of Austin office properties for $1.15 billion, in what is believed to be the biggest commercial real estate deal ever in Texas.Thomas Properties Group Inc. has put under contract Austin office buildings including the Frost Bank Tower, 300 West Sixth Street, three other downtown properties and five suburban complexes.

Once the sale closes, Thomas will be Austin’s biggest office landlord, with more than 3.4 million square feet of space.

“One deal at a billion dollars — I would be hard-pressed to come up with anything bigger,” said Tim Hendricks senior vice president in the Austin office of Cousins Properties Inc., which built and manages the 33-story Frost Tower.

So far, blogs have emerged as the social media tool of choice in the real estate industry. But even if an agent chooses to start a blog, there are many social networking aspects of blogging that the agent will soon become familiar with in order to make it stick.

Many of the individuals interviewed for this series said they think sites like ActiveRain are great for networking, but they’re not sure how people are leveraging them for actual lead-generating business. That’s where blogs come in.

The biggest factor deterring renters from making the plunge into home ownership is not the fear of falling property values, but that they simply can’t afford to buy, according to a Bankrate Inc. poll released Monday.

In a nationwide poll of 1,004 adults taken this month, less than 2 percent of renters said fear of falling prices was keeping them out of the market.

The National Association of Realtors has maintained that consumer psychology contributed to the housing slowdown that began in 2006. NAR launched a nationwide advertising campaign in November aimed at boosting buyer confidence, proclaiming, “It’s a great time to buy or sell a home.”

WASHINGTON - Sales of new homes in most of the country fell sharply for a second consecutive month in February, a weaker-than-expected performance that dimmed hopes for a rebound in the troubled housing market.The news was much better in the western part of the country, where sales jumped nearly 25 percent in February.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that sales of new single-family homes fell by 3.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 848,000, the slowest sales pace in nearly seven years.

All regions of the country except the West experienced weakness last month.