Getting a home ready to sell can be a pain. To ease this load for homeowners, some brokerages are offering competing programs that help get a listing ready. Compass and Redfin recently announced their own staging and renovation concierge services geared toward owners looking to sell whose homes might need a little prepping first.

The newly launched Compass Concierge has real estate professionals from Compass who guide sellers through home improvements that could be beneficial to do before they sell. Compass will cover the cost of services like deep cleaning, painting, staging, decluttering, landscaping, and other “cosmetic renovations.” The program is offered to sellers at no additional fee up front.

Homeowners who meet with the Compass agent can then choose which services they’d like to make in their home before the home is listed. The program is currently offered in all 22 markets in which Compass operates, and there is no minimum listing price for properties eligible.

“This is another example of a great idea that came from one of our agents that we are excited to bring to life,” says Robert Reffkin, founder and CEO of Compass. “It’s an opportunity for Compass to use our capital to help our agents better serve their clients.”

In 2017, Redfin launched a similar program called Redfin Concierge. It offers a service that coordinates, supervises, and pays the costs of deep cleaning, painting, staging, and landscaping on listings that are worth at least $500,000. The program, which is available to sellers who pay an extra listing fee for the service, is only available currently in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

“Redfin Concierge Service reaches a new audience of home sellers who want to get their home in top shape for selling, but want their agent to handle everything,” Karen Krupsaw, Redfin senior vice president of real estate operations, said in a statement last year about the program.

A new effort is underway to raise the low rate of home ownership among under served groups of home buyers. The Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America is hosting several events across the country, helping borrowers with low credit scores to apply for 15- or 30-year mortgages with cheaper interest rates. One such recent event in Miami drew thousands looking for a chance to get a no down payment, low-interest-rate mortgage. NACA officials say more than 10,000 potential borrowers have attended various NACA events in cities such as Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta.

“The low rate of home ownership and number of mortgages for low- and moderate-income people, and for minority home buyers, is a national disgrace,” NACA CEO Bruce Marks told CNBC. “There have been zero foreclosures among the loans that we’ve originated in the past six years.” Bank of America is backing the NACA program with $10 billion in mortgage commitments.

Borrowers are required to go through an education session about the program, as well as counseling for budget planning to make sure they can afford a mortgage payment. They also must still submit all necessary documents, such as income statements amd phone bills. The program serves only those who are buying a primary residence, not an investment property. The loans for 15- or 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are below market, at around 4.5 percent. “That’s what’s going to help people who’ve been locked out of home ownership really become homeowners and build wealth,” Marks told CNBC.

However, critics of the program are concerned that loans with no down payment requirement could carry too much risk. Program officials say buyers have “skin in the game in a real way,” meaning it’s their home and an investment for their family. “We have seen significant wins in this partnership,” A.J. Barkley, senior vice president of consumer lending at Bank of America, told CNBC. “Just to be clear, when we get those loans with all the heavy lifting here, we’re over a 90 percent approval, meaning we actually underwrite the loans for 90 percent of the people who go through this program.”

Google announced this week that it will be shutting down its Google + Network on Aug. 31, 2019. Google made the announcement after reports surfaced that the data of half million users had been exposed on the social network.

The Wall Street Journal alleges that Google knew about the security issue dating back to March 2018 too but failed to disclose it to users. Google has said it remedied the vulnerability in March. The data breach was due to a software bug that was limited to a small number of Google+ profile fields that were marked non-public, Google officials say.

Shortly after the announcement, Google announced it would be shutting down the social network in 10 months. Google Vice President Ben Smith cited “low usage” and that the majority of visitors are on the site for less than five seconds.

In the National Association of REALTORS®’ 2018 Technology Survey, about 21 percent of real estate professionals surveyed said they use Google+ in their business.

Google+ launched in 2011 under big promises that it would take on rivals Facebook and Twitter. But it failed to materialize and Google started to wind down some consumer functions on the platform in 2015, but profiles remain active on the social network.

For those who still use Google+ in their business, Smith says that Google will be providing instructions on the coming months on how to download and migrate files. Google will continue to offer an enterprise-only version of Google+, a private network for organizations.

Those who still use Google+ will want to make a plan to phase out their usage and identify a new social media outlet. The publication Small Business Trends suggests the following actions for those who still use Google+:

• Remove Google+ share and follow buttons from your website and blog.
• If you have a Community on Google+, start migrating it to a new platform, such as Facebook and LinkedIn Groups. Make sure to leave plenty of time to notify members and clients of your change.
• Check up on the security of your own Google account, given news of the data breach. Google offers a special tool to do that.

Read more of the tips suggested by Small Business Trends.