Blogging

I arrived back from my week at the Inman News Real Estate Connect Conference last night a beaten woman. The schedule is always back-breaking, and this year was no different. There were the panels, of course, and my suitcase made the return trip laughing in the face of the 50-pound limit thanks to my swag booty.

Most of my tireless compadres dutifully uploaded photos of the event throughout the week and even managed a blog post or two from San Francisco. This being my third Inman event, I made the determination early on that I would be declaring a bloggy break. While Steve held down the fort (and, by all appearances, we still have a business, so I thank him), I took in as many of the panels and events as I could without killing myself in the process.

Every day, beginning with RE BarCamp, continuing on to the Blogger’s Connect pre-conference, and culminating in the main event, a two-day “let’s see how quickly we can make heads explode” exercise in delivering information and technology solutions for the real estate industry, reminded me that I am not getting any younger. At past events, my mission was always to do it all, attend every session and party, foregoing only the non-essentials (eating and sleeping). With age comes wisdom, and I was able to just say no on more than a few occasions. While all of the cool kids were out enjoying the social functions until the wee hours, and recognizing my limitations, I unfortunately missed several professional networking opportunities.

But, not all.

While I suspect the nice folks at Trulia were not nearly as amused as Jay Thompson and I, we had fun only two geeks could by hijacking their Marker Man at the Trulia House Party. Of course, being a girl and all, I am fully aware of the dangers of over-accessorizing, so I let Jay wear the shoes.

So this morning I am attempting to rally and face the day. I am easing into it, still diverting my eyes from an inbox with 133 unanswered messages screaming my name, but I will be back to full swing in no time. It’s always good to be home.

Photo credits: Ines, Phoenix Real Estate Guy

There have been two topics in particular I have seen repeated across the blogs this weeks. One, of course, relates to the wacky goings-on of that two-headed monster, Case-Shiller. The latest results from the index that never sleeps came in, but more on that in a moment.

The really big news on the blogs seemed to be that Google updated its PageRanks (PR). For those of you unfamiliar with Google PageRanks, let me try to explain.

I have absolutely no idea what it means.

But, I am getting the sense that I should, or I should at least care what mine is. Now, the fact that this whole web site ranking system is foreign to me may come as a big surprise. It certainly does to my husband. While the reality is that I am tenaciously trying to remain straddled atop the bell curve of technology, Steve thinks I am a computer science genius. This is because he has seen me perform some amazing feats such as reboot without unplugging the power cord, resize photos without scissors, and, with a simple series of keystrokes, insert the little ® after Realtor®. And Case-Shiller®. Most recently, he even watched in awe as I Googled “how do I find my Google Page Rank” and with great success.

My PR is 5.

Now, a 5 sounds pretty good because, best I can tell, this is on a scale of one to ten, ten being reserved for Google.com. (It is, after all, their system.) That would make our site half as good as Google’s. Well, not really, because it appears they use some fancy logarithmic grading scale, making my 5 a tremor that no one feels as compared to their death and destruction 10, a 10 marking total global domination.  And it seems that I am in good company. Google appears to dole out 5’s like Costco doles out free potsticker samples. Sure, Realtor.com boasts a 7. So, too, does standardandpoors.com. But then, they have Case® and Shiller®.

The Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices®®® use a methodology which is almost as decipherable as Google’s. We tried to shed some light on it here.  For our purposes in San Diego, you need only understand that our trend line is still heading south. Without beating the micromarket horse, our metro area as a whole continues to see its index drop in double-digits (down 19.2% for the year). Out of the 20 metro areas surveyed, only Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas saw bigger drops. Unlike Google PR, however, bigger isn’t better.

Here’s the overall composite trend line:

Did I mention I also know how to stand charts on their heads?  I think I like this one better.

It’s a great time to buy!

Not long ago, we were “hired” by a couple to help them with their purchase of a home. This alone could be the story, as I have written in the past about how so few buyers go to the extent that sellers do in interviewing and selecting their representation. This couple gets big props from me for taking the time to evaluate their choices, for even recognizing that they do have choices, rather than finding me on a street corner with a complimentary notepad pinned to my collar.

At our first meeting, the couple asked how we would be keeping track of the homes they would be looking at over time, and how we might be helping them to organize the information.  This, too, could have been the story. The first rule of being a good buyer’s or seller’s agent is to listen to the client. Each will have different needs and different priorities; customer satisfaction comes with being able to understand the things that are important to each individual and deliver. I have seen agents who continue to email their clients even though each time the client contacts them, it is by making a phone call. In a co-listing appointment not that long ago, I watched a seller say that his highest priority was a fast sale, and then I watched the agent argue for a higher price to “test the market.” Are you listening?

So, our buyers were telling us two things. They were communicating their expectation that the home search process would be perhaps long and would involve many homes, too many to keep track of on their own. They were also expressing their expectation that we have a system in place to assist with the organization of information on the various homes they would be shown. I assured them that we could deliver, but (plug your ears, John and Molly) I wasn’t quite sure at the time how I would (plug your ears, Fluffy) skin this cat.

Our MLS system includes a Client Gateway feature which allows an agent to save “favorites,” and the buyer with their unique password can visit these listings and even make comments on each. I have never been a big fan. First, this feature is very limiting - The only information which can be provided here is the Multiple Listing page. There is so much more information from which a buyer could benefit in a one-stop shop: Floor plans, supplemental photos taken by them or their agent during the showing, and school information to name a few. Second, our MLS system is being replaced in the next couple of weeks (to better serve us), so anything I create today will be nuked by the end of the month.

My solution was elegant in its simplicity and, while I will probably find out that there are agents out there doing much the same thing, this was new to me. I created a simple blog to keep track of their showings:

• I created a subdomain within our San Diego Home Blog. Our hosting plan allows for ten of these at no additional charge. If I ever need more than ten at one time, I will have bigger problems than my hosting limitations, like finding time to shower.
• I used a lazy, default template so I didn’t have to think too hard. We weren’t going for style points here, but instead for efficiency.
• I downloaded two simple plug-ins. The first was a plug-in which makes the blog private. Only people who I have registered can see the site. There are many plug-ins available, and the one I used worked beautifully.
• The second plug-in I used was for the photo gallery. I picked a very basic photo gallery which is easy to deploy and navigate, and includes both thumbnails and full-size photos. The entire gallery is located on one page, but photos of each home are tucked neatly into their own folders.
• Each home viewed has its own “post.” Within this post, I wrote a brief overview (no homeowners fees, Mello Roos, 3-car garage). I also linked to the slide show, the MLS sheet, and the floor plan. Where the latter is concerned, we are lucky. Our arsenal of local floor plans has grown over the years so that if you are looking at a home in Scripps Ranch, we probably have a copy of the floor plan.
• As a footnote for the more geek-inclined, I linked to an uploaded PDF file of the MLS sheet. Because I am too cheap to purchase the full-blown Adobe software, I use a free program which allows me to create a PDF file of virtually any file or screen by using the “print” command.

I am quite impressed with myself! Steve, as is so often the case, was initially not as impressed. His take was that this was duplicative in that all of the information I am providing on the private blog is already available at various online locations. “Various” is the operative, however. One of the biggest problems I see for home buyers using online resources is the potential for confusion and information overload. Aggregating the information at one location will save your back button a lot of wear and tear.

I would show you an example of the end product, but its a private site. However, if you hire us to help you buy a home, you can have one too.

 3.1459265… I could go on and on.

This is the one of the posts which has been sitting in my draft folder for months. It actually isn’t a post at all, but rather a title that amused me. The article doesn’t exist and probably never will. Neither do the others that greet me every morning in the back panel of our blog:

Gefilte Fish - A Much Maligned Edible
Things to do with string.
Two Reasons Why Birth Control Should be Retroactive
It’s a Great Time to Buy!

It is sort of a little game I play with myself, a game I devised to serve as a grounding mechanism. My Posts that Never Got Written are my constant reminders to not take too much too seriously, and they are constant reminders of how seriously silly the whole blogging thing can get if you elevate it to some mythical level of import. If you don’t blog, then you can substitute any activity which is valuable and fulfilling but, if you are honest, is non-essential, at least from the standpoint of “things I must do today lest the human race face extinction.”

I took a few days off from posting this past week. Some call it burn out. For me, it is more like having four stockpots on the stove at once, all boiling over, and finding myself momentarily paralyzed by the notion that I have to start turning down the heat somewhere. 

So, I left the kitchen. I abandoned my feed reader. I set my instant chat status to Unavailable, and while other agents have most certainly been Twittering and getting LinkedIn and pounding out epic save-the-industry tomes, I have been a human busy signal. 

Spring has sprung, and the signs are everywhere. Wildflowers are in full bloom at the lake, Steve had his first roadrunner sighting of the season, and I am sporting a new and overdue “do.” The only thing now separating me and Posh Spice is some serious plastic surgery. On a more personal front, if that is indeed possible, we are knee-deep in heated negotiations at our house with the female offspring regarding seasonal wardrobe needs. Our next meeting is scheduled for Geneva. We are also dealing with the Prom Dress Debacle (one high school senior who shall remain nameless and is named Becky has determined that the only suitable gown for this milestone event can only be found in a boutique in Milan), and graduation and then college are just around the corner.

There’s more, of course. We got “the letter,” and I am now faced with finding a good week to take an 18-year-old to New Orleans (if there is such a thing), compliments of Drew Carey. Hopefully the hideous and, therefore, theft-proof orange luggage arrives in time. Our youngest has decided that this will be the year she must go to summer camp, but the camp she chose involves death defying (we hope) adventure on sheer cliffs and in high Sierra rapids, thus requiring completion of 87 pounds of medical release forms. And my tax returns are sticking their proverbial tongues out at me. So what is an overtaxed mother to do?

Channel Martha Stewart.

Her job is safe.

And did I mention we still “do a little real estate?” The phones are starting to ring again. I always marvel at how this happens during the busiest times of the year. You can set your time bomb by it.  I can’t possibly be the only one dealing with these domestic distractions, yet somehow at a time when the world by all accounts should be otherwise occupied with more pressing and personal issues, people are thinking about (gasp) moving! Which brings us back to that real estate truism. Whatever the market, whatever the season, people will want to buy and sell. For many this is the “more pressing and personal” issue.

This Spring will be very telling. There are four basic indicators of market health and demand: Price, inventory, pace of sales and market time. Prices are - how do you say? - softer in San Diego. The pace of sales year over year is indisputably slower. Inventory and market times, however, are holding rather steady. We expect both seller and buyer activity to increase during the season, but for now, we seem to be slip-sliding sideways. Consumer confidence and economic indicators suggest that we might we finally nearing the valley. Of course, we won’t know until we have pulled ourselves up the other side, but from my vantage point, the buyer campground is getting a little crowded, and I am starting to see a lot of them pulling up stakes.

Prom dresses and bunny cakes (in case you didn’t recognize it as such, it was a rabbit), four listing appointments and three buyer interviews, warmer weather and caps and gowns, taxation and, well, taxation - This has been my week. Then, one of the first posts I read once I rejoined the blogging ranks was a list of questions a seller should be asking their would-be agent at the Listing Interview. Aside from the fact that addressing each of these questions at my afternoon appointment would have me staying for breakfast, there were some good points raised. And then this:

What is your Alexa traffic ranking?

Excuse me? That’s just seriously silly. I don’t know what my Alexa traffic ranking is, and I rather doubt that 1 out of 1,000 home sellers even knows what this means or if it matters (it doesn’t). What they want to know is how much their home is worth, how much I charge, what I am going to do to get it sold, and why I am going to deliver the best possible bottom line.

What does this have to do with scary looking cakes and 1040 forms? More than you think. My personal anecdotes are not at all unrelated to my business of real estate. The same things that occupy my time, consume my thoughts and compete for my attention are the same things that challenge my clients. When we blog for any period of time, there is an ever-present danger that we will become detached - detached from our client’s worlds and detached from the true value we should be, could be, bringing. We constantly run the risk of getting so wrapped up in the technical that we lose sight of the human factor.

For me, periodically detaching from the online conversation is essential. It allows me to come full circle, and to remember why I am doing this and for whom. It’s a rebirth, kind of like Spring.

And I still don’t know what my Alexa ranking is, so don’t ask.

 

This could be our version of East Meets West, a healthy fusion of real estate perspectives coming from different regions in San Diego County, it could be a real snoozer, or it could just be a big ol’ food fight. Time will tell.

Some of my best ideas (and many of my worst) have come to me courtesy of others. So it is that tomorrow we will launch our first, and hopefully not our last, installment of San Diego House Talk on Blog Talk Radio.

Blog Talk Radio has long been a staple of the Daniel Rothamel’s offerings. Daniel, of course, is better known in agent blogging circles as the Real Estate Zebra. Our own San Diego House Talk will be a joint venture between me and the locally infamous Jim “the Realtor” Klinge of Klinge Realty and bubbleinfo.com.

On Jim’s blog, I commented that this had all of the makings of a wedding reception where the in-laws despise each other. Right or wrong, Jim has a reputation of being a bit more bearish on our real estate market, for telling it like it is, while I will spend the better part of the next year trying to shake the Erma Bombeck label. Jim’s core area is North County Coastal, while ours is Central and North County Inland. Different styles, different micro-markets, different perspectives, east meets west. And, our blog audiences are as different as we are.

I had lunch with Jim a few weeks ago and assure you, however, that neither he nor I showed evidence of horns and forked tails. He is surprising soft-spoken in person and quite contrary to his online demeanor. Maybe he was just buttering me up for the barbeque.

So, join us tomorrow, Friday, at noon PDT if you are able. The format is real time and interactive. You can type in comments and questions or call in. Just click on the button below.

 

Monday morning to-do list:

1. Buy milk.
2. Attend Send Steve to property inspection.
3. Finish taxes. (Yeah, right.)
4. Call seller clients with market updates.
5. Find the cat.
6. Write for Inman News Blog.
7. Reorder property brochures.

Wait a minute… Write for Inman News Blog?

Inman News, a long-time industry staple for those of us needing our daily real estate news fix, is reintroduced this morning. The site has been “prettified” for sure, and the news and consumer advice columns which have always been the cornerstone of the Inman offering will remain so. But the content is now deeper with the addition of a “Community” feature which will allow members to interact through groups and commentary and to even create profiles. They say that their goal is not to be the dominant industry social network, but I can certainly see this as a long-term possibility. I am all about one-stop shopping.

As a part of their Community, Inman will be expanding their familiar blog offering to include articles from community contributors. As reported Friday: 

As part of the new Web site launch, Inman News has invited a few top bloggers to lead the new Community section with lively blog posts and podcasts each week. We’re thrilled to have these insightful writers join the team to help Inman News deliver even more insight into the latest technologies, trends and issues impacting real estate professionals.

Our new community contributors include:

• Teresa Boardman, an agent and licensed broker in St. Paul, Minn., and founder of the St. Paul Real Estate Blog
• Kris Berg, broker associate with Prudential California Realty in San Diego, and blogger at the San Diego Home Blog
• Jeff Turner, president of Real Estate Shows in Santa Clarita, Calif., and avid blogger at ActiveRain
• Daniel Rothamel, an agent with Strong Team Realtors in Charlottesville, Va., and founder of Real Estate Zebra.

Now, if that doesn’t scare the socks off of a small-time working girl whose Outlook calendar is about to implode, I don’t know what does! Time to get in touch with my insightful, lively self. Just as soon as I find the cat. By the way, Inman, I noticed that Teresa and Daniel are credited with founding their blogs, while I apparently just hang out at mine. On second thought, it’s probably better to leave the impression that I didn’t actually set out to create this site on purpose. It makes me less accountable.

Inman staff admits that there will be some bugs along the way. My to-do list this morning pales in comparison to what I can only image theirs has looked like over the past year in undertaking a complete redesign and migration of content accumulated since 1995. (Remember 1995? Those were the days when neither Inman nor I needed a face lift. What a difference a decade makes.) Many of us have been test-driving the beta version of the site for awhile and, this morning, the only glitch I am seeing is that the site loads just a little slower than molasses.

I like molasses. It buys me some time.