Traveling back to chilly Denver was tough after a great weekend in sunny Orlando, but we came away from this year’s National Association of REALTORs convention with a lot of observations and insights into the state of real estate at the moment. We’ll be putting together some comprehensive posts in the coming days, but we wanted to give you our zeitgeist, so to speak, of the real estate world, gathered from our time on the Orlando expo floor.

Here’s some trends we picked up on. Anything that you heard or saw? Leave a comment — we’d be interested to hear.

The economy is hurting the industry. This sounds like a trite observation, but it’s one we heard again and again. There were fewer people at NAR, the vendor booths were smaller and less elaborate, and agents were constantly talking about the state of the housing market. In fact, it served as an introduction on the buses to and from the hotel: “Hi, my name is Joe Realtor. What’s the market like where you’re from?”

And while the economy dominated the conversation, we got the impression agents were hopeful about the future. Many said the economy in their market wasn’t as bad as it might seem and thought a turnaround was coming soon.

Mobile has arrived. It was amazing how many vendors were at the show for the first time, offering solutions for text message flyers and mobile Web sites to REALTORs.  And, largely, agents were receptive to the new technology. It’s more proof that we’re right on the edge of an explosion in mobile marketing - next year in San Diego should have even more mobile vendors and mobile technologies.

But, we heard from agents that it’s not something they’re really excited to invest in at the moment, especially with winter approaching and the economy in the shape it’s in. Many of these vendors were charging huge monthly fees and per-message charges that turned a lot of Agents off from the concept. We didn’t hesitate to point out, of course, that SPS includes mobile marketing for free.

Twitter is everywhere. There’s no more receptive group to the idea of Twittering than REALTORs. Everywhere you went, you’d hear about it at the conference — a giant map displaying live Twitters was the centerpiece of the NAR Blogger’s Lounge, agents wrote their Twitter IDs on their name tags and submitted Tweets from their Blackberries as they walked around the conference.  And coaches were extolling the virtues of the service to any agent that listened.

Still, most agents said that while the service was addicting and fun, they still weren’t sure of the benefits of Twitter. It will be interesting to see whether the industry can start turning this tool into something that builds their business. Certainly some agents are finding leads with Twitter; they’re just in the minority.