This is a “SMART” car for more than one reason.

It was spotted in a Home Depot parking lot over the weekend near our corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida. As you can see, the energy-conscious vehicle stands apart from the endless sea of cars in the crowded parking lot.

And not just because of it’s unique compact design.

Leveraging a small space, this real estate agent tandem took an opportunity to promote their services within the community by wrapping the car with a clever marketing message. Without the message it’s just another SMART car driving around town.

In this tough economic climate, successful agents are going above and beyond the ordinary methods of building their businesses. What worked five years ago doesn’t necessarily cut it anymore. And since more than 70 percent of homebuyers start their real estate searches online, expensive traditional print ads just don’t have the same impact … or return on investment.

Indeed, homebuyers today are savvy — they understand what’s going on around them and are looking to save big money on home purchases. This reality is underscored with preforeclosures and foreclosures selling at a rate of 2-1 over non-distressed real estate.

So bargain shoppers are out on the Internet in full force. It’s no coincidence, therefore, that most of them end up on Foreclosure.com — the name says it all.

Many of the folks who search Foreclosure.com do not currently have agent representation. It’s the reason we launched our Community Expert Program, which provides exactly what it says — a community agent expert to help homebuyers achieve their goals of homeownership.

Many of our agents have had overwhelming success with this program. It accomplishes two things:

1. Assists homebuyers with finding incredible deals
2. Directs homebuyers to the “cream-of-the crop” agents in their communities

Homebuyers can find community experts on each property details page just under the listing address. An agents name, photo and complete contact info are displayed. So just do a quick home search on Foreclosure.com and you will be on your way toward connecting with the community expert in your area.

If you are an agent who would like to be considered as a community expert click here.

Inman’s “Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008″ is billed as the place “where the brightest minds in real estate and technology come together to tackle some the most pressing issues facing the real estate industry.”

So does it come as any surprise that Foreclosure.com will be in attendance?

Our team is heading out to California from July 23 to 25 to talk shop and rub elbows with more than 1,700 real estate agents, top brokers, mortgage professionals, technology company CEOs, directors and managers, entrepreneurs, press, analysts and investors from across the U.S. and around the globe.

If you’re going to attend this three-day event then we want to talk to you — Foreclosure.com has some of the very best and most efficient money-making partnerships in the industry. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a blogger, local real estate agent, lender representative or potential foreclosure investor because we have something for everyone.

We’re the one-stop marketplace for all things real estate.

In particular, we plan to discuss our leading-edge national foreclosure listings WordPress plugin, which enables bloggers, agents, housewives — anyone with a blog essentially — to instantly enhance their content with more than 1.2 million distressed real estate listings.

And if that wasn’t cool enough, we also share profits with our plugin partners! For more details on this groundbreaking technology CLICK HERE.

For all of our existing and future partners we look forward to meeting up soon at the “Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008.” Come visit us at Booth # 103 if we don’t track you down first. See you then!