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Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

Marianne Sweet Brings Home The Magnificent Seven!

Every year, Washington State real estate and mortgage blogger, Larry Cragun publishes The Magnificent Seven, an award he gives to some of the best real estate blog posts he has read over the previous year. Larry plows through thousands of posts over the course of a year to cull his list down. A daunting task, by any measure.

I am so excited to see Marianne Sweet’s post as a final winner. Check out all the winners on Real Estate Undressed.

Thanks for all your great posts, Marianne! Of course, your work as a stager is what I appreciate most of all.

Tags: magnificent 7, marianne sweet, real estate undressed

Blog Makeover Needed

The Real Estate Tomato and Inman are having a contest and awarding a blog makeover. miOaklandCounty needs the help! Here is our entry. Stay tuned to the very end for a very special guest appearance from a loyal supporter of Detroit and this blog.

Carnival of Real Estate #95 Visits The Motor City

Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone here in Metro Detroit. Unlike many of my neighbors, I don’t really know too much about cars. Last year when I hosted the Carnival of Real Estate #35, I used the Motown theme, so this year I am pretty much obliged to attempt to do something somewhat creative with Metro Detroit’s other big gift to the world (after Diana Ross and the Supremes): the automobile.

For those of you readers who are interested in Metro Detroit Real Estate, yet you find yourself landing on this curious post, the carnival of real estate is essentially a round up of some of the best posts in the vast and ever growing land of real estate blogging from the previous week, as determined (this week) by me. Actually, in the year since I last hosted, real estate blogging really has exploded, and there are now thousands of real estate blogs one could read. But if you are interested in Metro Detroit real estate, of course, you need not look any farther I don’t know if carnival hosts are allowed to use emoticons in carnival posts, so forgive me if I wasn’t supposed to do that.

Like last time, there were lots of interesting submissions.  There were a few more than I have mentioned here that I really thought stood out, but this week I wanted to distill it down to four posts.   Thank you for the good submissions.  On the other hand, quite a few not so interesting, like the one that said “we already link to you, please link us now.”  Folks, this carnival is actually not an orgy of link love.

I hear the engines revving up on Woodward Avenue, so its time for me to get started with this week’s road rally.

The Edsel Award

It had so much potential. And it probably is not fair to compare this post with the most spectacular failure in automotive history because actually the post is interesting, and I was excited about it until one little sentence turned me away.

Future carnival entrants, take this advice to heart: its pretty important not to slam the Carnival host’s stomping ground when you submit, especially if your knowledge of economics seems a little off.

I was excited to see that Detroit topped Zillow’s affordability survey, but then Zillowblog went on to say:

It might come as a surprise that Detroit is high on the list. This probably arises from a combination of factors. First, home prices are very low, so mortgage payments are low as well. The other factor is that Detroit’s high unemployment rate can make the average household income look higher.

OK, correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t a high unemployment rate make average household income look lower? I mean, last I checked, unemployed people don’t make much usually, right? Bottom-line, Detroit has been near the top of such lists for a long time. Our cost of living has been relatively low and wages here were/are high.

Now lets motor on to some happier territory.

The Chevy Award

Think baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. This one goes to Larry Cragun, for his piece “God Bless America and Title Insurance.” We’ve all had sellers and buyers grumble about having to pay for expensive and seemingly useless title insurance at closing. Afterall, how many times do you actually hear about someone filing a title claim? Not too often. Larry’s piece points out that when you need it, you might REALLY need it.

The Corvette Award

Mike Simonsen from Altos Research offers up an interesting piece on hedging real estate risk using MacroShares. At first blush, this sort of investing sounds a bit complex for the average investor, but
the day could come when we are all holding MacroShares in our SEPs and IRAs. Warning: do not take financial advice from me!

The Lincoln Town Car Award

Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade is so consistently good. This week he writes about why he is hearing about more and more deals not make it to close. I feel fortunate that it hasn’t happened to me, but his statistic of 50% of escrows failing to close in San Diego County is more than sobering.

2008 Malibu Award

The Malibu is the Car of the Year for 2008 and I am going in a completely different direction than I normally would with this week’s top winner. Lauren Mitchell may be the first blogger to ever win the Carnival with a market report. Frankly, I have been writing market reports for 3+ years now and I almost always find them painful to execute. Lauren made reading about Toronto’s market interesting and entertaining. I write about local things and I am happy to have someone who is “keepin’ it local” take the top carnival award.

Well, folks, that’s your automotive update. Thanks for cruising by. Be sure to visit next week’s carnival of real estate on Renthusiast.

Big thanks to Drew Meyers from Zillow for keeping the carnival running so smoothly for all these months!

Tags: carnival of real estate

“Chatting” with me (through that thing to the right of this post)

I really like my little Plugoo thingy that sits in the center column of my site. But sometimes I forget to turn it off when I walk away from the computer. You might send me a message and I might not see it until I come back later.

Other times I forget to turn the thing on at all. So people send me messages through it, hoping for a response. Unfortunately, most of them forget that I don’t know how to contact them unless they leave me a phone number or email address.

Other times, I am actually at the computer, but in the middle of doing something else. In order to help YOU more efficiently, and quickly, I might ask you to pick up the phone and call me. Don’t construe that as a “high pressure sales technique.” I am about as far as you can get from a high pressure sales person. If you decide that I can help you, super. Let’s talk. If not, that’s cool too. Sometimes I just can’t sit in front of the screen for 20 minutes typing back and forth trying to figure out what you need. Most of the time, the same thing can be dealt with in a 4 minute call. Don’t worry, I won’t call you again unless you ask me to.

I look forward to our next “chat.”

My Website Provider Just Appointed My Association’s CEO To Their Board

Congratulations to Walt Baczkowski (Metropolitan Consolidated Association of Realtor’s CEO) and Point 2 Agent (my miBirmingham.com host) for teaming up. Walt was just at our office meeting this morning letting our agents know they need to be on Facebook and Myspace, among other things.

2 hours later one of my ActiveRain friends let me know my Point2 site wasn’t working. Then a couple of agents spoke up on Twitter and said they were having issues too. Then an agent from Max Broock responded to my Facebook message about “interruptions in service”. This all took place within about 7 minutes. People are reading and following social networks.

Walt, could you please ask Point2Agent to put a recorded message on their phone when their servers are down, so that we don’t have to wait on hold to find out something that is widespread? Please? Or you could ask Point2 to Twitter us.

Realtors, Is Your Blog in Violation of the Realtors Code of Ethics?

..Mine isn’t but it was until yesterday.
I attended Professional Standards/Code of Ethics Training this week provided by the Michigan Association of Realtors. Our trainer, Bruce Aydt, went over changes in the COE, and this is one that actually was put in January of 2007, yet is not at all well known.

Standard of Practice 12-9

REALTOR^® firm websites shall disclose the firm’s name and state(s) of licensure in a reasonable and readily apparent manner.

Websites of Realtors^® and non-member licensees affiliated with a Realtor^® firm shall disclose the firm’s name and that Realtor^®’s or non-member licensee’s state(s) of licensure in a reasonable and readily apparent manner. (Adopted 1/07)

Blogs are, of course, websites. Your blog probably does suggest a market that you work in, but, in my opinion, it does not comply with this COE unless you specifically put something on it that says the state of licensure and firm’s name.I will be adding these items to my sidebar now. miOaklandCounty.com is compliant. How about your blog?

Photo provided by Hawaii

 

Putting my toes back in the water, and asking for more help!

Today I step gingerly back into the gentle, or not so gentle, tides of real estate blogging. Over the last months, most of my energy has been used to care for my terminally ill father who passed away last week. Dmitry and I have kept up with our existing clients, referred out some new clients and done what we could to stay on top of just about everything except for our own home (though it is a mile away from my parents’ home, I have not seen it since December 5th) and my dear little blog.

In the course of our family crisis, many people stepped forward and offered to do things for me. People brought us homemade dinner every night for months. A friend wrapped Katya’s Christmas gifts. People brought her ‘thinking of you’ presents long after Christmas. Bloggers from around the country offered to send posts, though I didn’t even have the energy to post other people’s work, so I did not accept the generous overtures from all who offered, though I did appreciate it.

I’ve known for a long time the the RE blogging community is a generous family. In my time of crisis, an idea came to me, and I need the help of others to see it made a reality. I would like to set up a site/wiki/list/group for bloggers in need and those who would like to help. In my mind I am calling it The Gift of a Blog, but brainstorming is welcome. Perhaps I should set up a Facebook Group for ideas? What I have in mind is a place where bloggers with a personal problem that is impacting their ability to keep up with posting could mention their need without having to go into much detail on their own blog. Members of the community who would like to join can offer to provide guest posts. Clearly, they will be some kind of generic-ish content.

So, if you are an RE blogger and you would like to help, either as a writer, “board member,” brainstormer, etc. leave me a comment and we will get started.

An Au-So-Naturale prospective client for Larry Cragun?

Larry Cragun has just launched the Neighborhoods Undressed blogging platform for Realtors. Coaching to be provided by Teresa Boardman. I think we have uncovered a great clothing optional Realtor client for him.

Good luck Larry and Kathleen.

We now return to our local programming. Clothing mandatory.

Photo by Mafleen

Magnificent 7 Nomination

Two of our posts were honored by Larry Cragun to be considered for his Magnificent 7.

We appreciate your nomination, Lar! Thanks.

Kate Can’t Find A House

I’ve spent more time than I care to admit this morning reading a juicy blog about Kate in LA and her search for a home. From what I gather, Kate is a lawyer, and she and her boyfriend, whose identity she protects by calling him “E” so that he does not become an instant internet celebrity, have been on a frustrating search for a suitable home for quite some time.

Kate is a sophisticated buyer. She is scouring listings, knows prices per square foot better than I do, and seems to be reading lots of sites and blogs looking for more information. In one of her recent posts she picked on me and my recent Staging Your Refrigerator blog as she thought that was rather trivial advice for a seller in Michigan’s challenging real estate market.

IF that were all I had to say on how to sell a Michigan home right now, I would agree. But I have a large archive of information written especially for the Michigan home seller, and I have some of my better advice (in my not so humble opinion) stashed away in Dear Mr and Mrs Seller. Kate did not have a chance to delve deeper into my blog to see those things, which is OK.

I’ve rather enjoyed reading Kate’s blog, particularly because I learn something by hearing a consumer’s perspective on this industry. Kate dissects MLS listings, and when the listing agent does a down right cruddy job at presenting a home, Kate is quick to point it out. Rightfully so. I’ve wished that I could do that with listings I run across here, but I don’t think that would go over so well from a fellow Realtor. Yet agents seem to know that Kate has highlighted them, and it seems that they go and update their listings after Kate’s not so gentle prod. Not that Kate should even have to prod these professionals…

So, go take a look at Kate’s Fifth of May Blog and be glad you are not living her search for a home. Kate, it is MUCH easier to be a home buyer in Michigan right now. I could offer you LOTS of great choices in your price range. As a bonus updated kitchens here do not have 6″ ceramic tile countertops in the $800K range.