Owner: REagent in Connecticut URL:http://www.reagentinct.com Join Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:54:22 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: I had this idea for a blog….
It would be all about real estate, both local and national.
It would be smart, curious and enjoy a laugh.
People could learn about buying and selling their homes, plus search for a new home, without being sold as a le Site statistics:Click here
How To Make Your Zillow Ad Better In Six Easy Steps 2007-03-29 21:43:30 Zillow.com can be a wonderful tool for advertising your house no matter if you are trying the FSBO route, or using an agent. However I see many homes advertised on Zillow that are failing to show themselves well.
Here’s a few easy steps to get you looking better.
1. Use Lots Of Photos – You simply must have multiple photos of your house for people to see. The more photos you have, the better chance of a sale you have. Buyers just assume a lack of photos implies that the house isn’t worth looking at. It’s also important to use a good quality camera, ideally with a wide angled lens, to get the best results. Also it’s well worth the extra few minutes to edit your photos. Just simple things like light balancing, cropping and correcting camera rotation make a huge difference in the final product.
2. Price Near The Zestimate – Not so key for the Make Me Move option, but if you are FSBO or sale by agent this is critical. Buyers will automatically Read more:Zillow
Just a Web 2.0 Thing On YouTube 2007-03-29 05:39:39 I’m Bringing Sexy Back Justin Timberlake 3.0 Million Views
I’m Bringing Paxil Back Some Other Guys 1.7 Million Views
Maybe there is no A-List anymore….
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, YouTube
The Bristol Connecticut School Board PR Disaster 2007-03-29 01:40:41 Any time a SchoolBoard
can get 350+ parents to a board meeting – on the very same night that parent teacher conferences are going on – you know that things are going less than perfectly. The Bristol
Eastern High School auditorium was packed for the meeting Tuesday night.
To be fair, the School Board is one of those thankless tasks required for functioning civilization. Someone has to oversee the schools and keep everything up to snuff. The Bristol school system is very good and in a general sense I think Bristol parents are pleased with it.
The trouble begins in the form of two needs. Firstly, that some of Bristol’s elementary and middle schools are aging and need updating or replacing. Secondly, that the School Board has decided that students are better served by a K-8 school, than a K-5 elementary and a 6–8 middle school. The Board asserted K-8 was better for students at the meeting, but failed to produce any data in the form of handouts or slides b Read more:Connecticut
, Disaster
I Win The Carnival Eh 2007-03-28 05:27:52 Larry Cragun was especially kind in awarding me the Gold Medal aka outright win for the Consumer Focused Carnival
of Real Estate.
My winning post was A Dumpster is Cheaper Than Selling Your House. I wish I knew why posts that take 15 minutes to write do better than posts that take 2 hours to write.
Silver went to Amy L. Fontinelle for her article: Home Inspection Do You Really Need One?
Bronze went to Ann O’Connell: What Can A Stager Do For Me - It’s Gorgeous Outside
More Carnival goodies with the Carnival of Real Estate hosted at miOakland by Maureen Francis.
The top pick being…. Michael Wurzer belts out a comprehensive discussion about the past, present and future of a consolidated MLS in Raging Regionals.
Nigel Swaby’s FHA Mortgages to the Rescue
Dan Melson’s How Can A Temporary Buydown Help Realtors and Agents?
Kevin Boer Thank You Ben, Patrick, and Keith, uber-Bubblistsas, For Helping My Clients Tremendousl
2007-03-27 20:00:16 Updated The real estate blogroll in a great rush.
If I missed you please comment or email me.
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Sporting The “Save Athol” T-Shirt 2007-03-27 06:24:00 Got some of the My Services links up and running. Starting to show how the static pages and the blog pages blend finally.
Next on the list is the Buyer Rep Tour, then the Listing Tour. Gah really have to update the blogroll and the Connecticut links too.
I’m holding off on reporting on the Carnivals until the Consumer Focused one is up tomorrow.
Gonna be up late again…
It is kinda fun though. I’m just amazed sometimes by the whole blogging thing.
For Jay Thompson – The Link Love is in the orginial post. For the record I am 0 for 2 in getting laid on days wearing this shirt. It’s not all that good really.
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The Lifespan Of A Real Estate Buyer 2007-03-26 03:27:10 Dormant – Could last years when the buyer simply thinks about maybe moving one day.
Birth– Actually sees something, or has something happen that makes them think they should take action on finding a new house.
Baby - Looks in a newspaper or goes online at what’s for sale in their area.
Toddler – Visits an Open House. Declines to give name and address to agent on duty.
Childhood – Visits more Open Houses, spends more time online looking at houses.
Teenage – Sees a good house. A nice house. Has no idea what to do about an offer. Does nothing.
Young Adult– Gets a Realtor finally. Gets a mortgage pre-approval. Starts seeing houses.
Middle Aged – Has seen a number of houses. Writes first offer.
Active Adult – Continues see houses and to write offers until one is accepted.
Elderly – Completes transaction and moves in.
Dormant – A bigger kitchen would be nice….
The time it takes for each a Read more:Estate
, Buyer
, Real Estate
The Real Estate Golden Buyer and Open Houses 2007-03-26 02:44:47 We get all sorts of people coming into our open houses. Sometimes it’s just nosy neighbors, a lot of the time it’s people just “feeling out the market”. Toss in “I’m looking for my friend/child/parent”, add in some “we’ve been looking for 2 years” a couple “my great uncle used to own this house and I wanted to see inside it” and an actual ready to buy buyer is starting to look like a needle in the haystack.
You can get twenty people to an Open House and not a single one is what I call a “GoldenBuyer
”. A Golden Buyer is someone who both has the finances (thats the gold) and the mindset to actually write an offer. Open Houses from this perspective are terrible at selling houses.
A lot of the people at Open Houses are 2–3 months away from becoming a Golden Buyer. It takes a while to get your mortgage pre-approval lined up and to feel like you know a good house when you see one. However of Read more:Estate
I Am Spam On All Wordpress Askimet Defended Blogs 2007-03-30 22:58:36 I have a big problem.
I am spam.
Not my email address. Not my website URL. My very name “Athol Kay” is regarded as spam by some of the anti spam measures on other peoples blogs.
Don’t ask me how it happened, I used to comment a whole lot all over the place. Then suddenly it was like a switch was thrown and I am spam.
I write a nice thoughtful comment. Click. Nothing. Then I have to email the blog owner to fish my comment out of the garbage. It gets really really old.
I’ve tried asking Askimet to unspammerize me. No response.
Kevin Boer kindly tried a mass commenting and fishing out experiment to see if that would trigger a return to grace. No dice. So I’m fighting back the only way I know how.
With a Sock Puppet.
So if you see a friendly, witty, charming sock puppet out there gracing your blogs with comments.
Be gentle.
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Second Grade Homework Is Harder Than You Think 2007-03-30 04:15:01 My daughter had homework and my wife was helping her. Make a list of 10 things that float. Easy.
A piece of wood.A rubber duck.A boat.A bar of soap.
“A what?”
“A bar of soap.”
“What’s that?”
“Well it’s soap, but in bar form.”
“…”
“It’s like a solid piece of soap, like a block of soap.”
“Like it’s frozen?”
“No. It’s just solid. Thats how soap used to come.”
“How did you get it out of the bottle?”
“It didn’t come in a bottle, it came wrapped in paper.”
“…”
“Really, a bar of soap. It floats.”
“Are you tricking me?”
“Go ask Dad then”
Pitter Patter…
“Dad, is it true what bars of soap are?”
“Yep, it used to be that if you said a bad word, your Mom told you a story about how her Mom would have made you bite into one to teach you not to say bad Read more:Second
, Grade
, Homework
, Harder
Real Estate Days On Market For Buyers 2007-04-02 04:58:39 It’s a common lament of strong listing agents that Days On Market
is an unfair tool for measuring the value of a house. Jonathan Dalton makes his case with No Really How Long Has It Been On The Market? The Mighty Russell Shaw does the same with Days On Market? It’s A Stupid Question With A Stupid Answer.
Summarizing their arguments to this point…
“What does it matter how long the house has been on the market or what it used to be priced at, what matters is what the house is priced at today.”
Or less politely put… “people are stupid”.
I’ve debated Jonathan and Russell via comments and my own Death By Days On Market.
My argument to this point…
“Who said anyone shopped for houses like Vulcan Science Officers. People make snap decisions based on meaningless data all the time.”
Or less politely put… “people are stupid”.
I had a sudden moment of clarity today a Read more:Estate
, Buyers
, Real Estate
Today Was A Good Day 2007-04-04 04:38:58 As both members of my rabid fan base know, one of my stated intentions is to get to work with my wife. Well it’s not happening exactly as I fully intend, but I’ll take what I can get for now.
She’s getting to work from home two days a week now. That may not seem like a huge statement, but considering I got disciplined a couple years back from her employer for “working from home” (oh and that is a long long story that still ticks me off) when I worked for them, it’s a full 180 from previous policy.
Today
was her first day “home”.
I had the morning office meeting and tour. Then I couldn’t resist going home as soon as it was over.
I’d love to say it was romantic as all get out, but we’re both kinda focused. It felt oddly familiar as being in the library at University with a paper due. Just with a cute girl at the table.
Not like we’ll actually get two full days together, we both have a ton of stuff to get through Read more:Good Day
Sock Puppet 2007-04-03 07:03:15
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Redfin Consumer Bill Of Rights Is McWeaksauce 2007-04-03 06:28:34 What on earth is going on with the parseltongue utterance from Redfin? Catch up to the plot from Greg Swann, Kevin Boer and Ardell DellaLoggia, they all take different views. Redfin leaked the news to all three and Kris Berg early. No report from Kris as yet – she turns a bigger profit than Redfin though, so she can take her time.
Anyway…
I happen to agree with almost everything that is on Redfins stone tablets. Really some of it is good stuff, others seem a little self serving to Redfin. (Ardell’s comment that it seems to be slanted towards buyers rather than sellers is very good.) But it’s very agreeableness is the problem. How could you NOT support it? Don’t you care for the real estate consumer?
Well of course I do. But…
I can’t help but feel my spidey sense tingling about signing a special pledge and getting a shiny blog badge of consumer support. I’m sorry it all just smacks of the same weirdness as an evange Read more:Consumer
, Rights
The Big Fish Investment Real Estate Floor Call 2007-04-06 05:36:31 I had two good floor calls today. One a minnow, one a potential Big Fish.
I got the minnow squared away seeing I got that call first and started on the Big Fish project. I’ll decline to say exactly what I’m searching for, other than it’s investment properties. The target properties are quite specific in nature and the area covered is… anywhere in Connecticut.
Thats a big haystack.
This is no quickee 3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms, $300–400,000, two town search. That goes tappity tappity tappity tap and done in a few minutes.
About four straight hours later I finally pull away from the computer. I come away from the search with some thoughts.
1. I really want a “search entire State” option in the MLS. Thankfully the search areas are also entered by number as well as name of town. It still takes ten minutes just to enter all the numbers. The first time I search I get 402 results.
2. Commercial listings are appalling badly done. I&rsq Read more:Estate
, Floor
, Real Estate
There’s a Flag On The Play 2007-04-08 16:04:22 From the strange people at Real Opinionated…
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You Get What You Pay For 2007-04-08 15:31:24
Spotted at Table Talk With Apella
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Perception Is Reality 2007-04-10 03:05:52 The Washington Post has a very interesting piece on Joshua Bell, an official uber violinist playing in the Metro in Washington DC. Tickets for his guys performances have reached $1000 a pop.
One wouldn’t expect to see a world renowned violinist in the Metro. 1079 people passed him as he played over 43 minutes. The overwhelming response to him was complete lack of reaction. All but invisible, he made just $32.17 in tips for his performance.
A world renowned violinist should play in a fancy music hall, wear a tux, have some stray hairs or semi-uncontrolled mop of hair and charge the earth to get in.
So what does a great realtor look like? I mean all the skills in the world mean apparently nothing unless you can be recognized for them.
I’m guessing it’s something about a lot of listings, a wall of awards, face everywhere and some kind of disregard for the need for this particular sale to go through in order to feed the family.
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New Dress For Easter Or Die Violently In Your Sleep 2007-04-09 04:55:59 I admit to being rather blase about Easter
, but I have to admit the girls do look cute in their Easter Dresses.
The New Dress For Easter family tradition started somehow. I used to work the night shift and new dresses just appeared each year.
In retrospect is seems whatever we did the first time we came to do something turned into a family tradition.
They are good kids though. I like ‘em.
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Quickee Connecticut Real Estate Market Report 2007-04-11 21:43:59 CNN Money has a good 100 biggest real estate markets article up.
The short version for Connecticut
is April 2007 to April 2008 Hartford real estate is predicted to increase in value by 2.8%. New Haven and Stamford predicted to drop 0.1% and 0.2%.
According to National Association of Realtors today. Across the nation…
“The median new-home price is projected to increase 0.4 percent to $246,200 this year, after gaining 1.8 percent in 2006. Modest growth is expected next year, with existing-home prices increasing 1.6 percent and new-home prices rising 2.0 percent.”
The normally chipper David Learah toning down last months perkier figures due to the fallout in the sub-prime areas.
Suffice to stay – there really isn’t much of a real estate bubble in Connecticut to even begin talking about. Hartford is pretty much a “normal market” and even New Haven and Stamford are largely holding steady after coming off 60% and 53 Read more:Estate
, Market
, Real Estate
Spring Break 2007 - Realtor Wives Gone Mild 2007-04-11 19:07:37 Anytime the wives get together and start plotting behind the husbands backs either something very good is going to happen, or something very bad. All I know is to stay out of it until its done.
Lani at Realtor
Wives and my wife traded emails back and forth for a couple of days. Being a proponent of transparent blogging, this of course made me only slightly nervous.
You see I’ve been under fairly strict rules of “don’t post a photograph of me anywhere” and taken to referencing her as simply “the petite blonde”. I’ve tired encouraging her to comment on the blogs she reads for months now, but the wee poppet is too shy.
Then suddenly a post appears and she sounds like The First Lady of Real Estate Blogging
Now she’s talking about writing posts and learning to tolerate her picture in public….
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The Listing Tour Is Up, Plus Thoughts On Listing Presentations 2007-04-13 17:46:02 If you think I’ve been goofing off recently with my recent run of Bad MLS photos, cartoons, YouTube videos and public drooling over my wife. Well that was all a cover for doing some overtime on the behind the scenes mouse wheel here at Reagent.
The Listing Tour is finally up. Took far longer than I thought it ever would and it’s still kinda bare bones with just plain text. I’ll be going back over it in a week or so to add images and what not, but for now I can’t stand to look at it anymore.
I think it may be a bit long, so I think I’ll edit a option for readers to take a Cliff Notes version in too when I go back over it. Short Tour, Long Tour. The customer is always right. And yes… video version at some point in the future too.
I’ll be honest – I’ve not been a strong listing agent up to now. The one huge benefit of doing this is it has forced me to think about my entire presentation, philosophy and marketing approach. I&r
Bad MLS Photo Of The Day 2007-04-12 17:20:00 If you can’t see a number 7 or 24 in the curtains, you may be color blind. If so, make an appointment with an Optician.
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