Guys, you are gonna love this video from The Guys at The Niche Report…a fun way to learn about a true “tragedy” with our government and what they are doing to “bail out” the banks! Makes me a bit “Queezy”!

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

via Video Marketing and Mortgage News Designed for Mortgage and Real Estate Sales.

While I was skimming through some blogs from the weekend, I came across 2 blogs that I felt were very “uplifting”. The first was Harrison K Long’s blog, Explore OC Homes, in which he quotes DataQuick News…

“According to Dataquicknews.com math for 22 business days ending January 14, 2010, 33 of the 83 Orange County zip code areas had home sold prices up and volume of sales up during past thirty days as compared with last year.

OC median home sold price was $430k, which was up 11.5% vs. same time last year.

  

2,339 homes were sold at Orange County, which was up 9% vs. same time last year.”

 

The second was by Jonathan Lansner and Jeff Collins of The Orange County Register (On-Line) titled, “Best Start for OC Home MArket in 5 Years”, where they quote Steve Thomas of Altera Real EState…

“Steve Thomas at Altera Real Estate’s latest Orange County home inventory report says that demand for local homes is starting off a year at its highest level in 5 years”

 

Each of these, and many others not sourced here, are great indicators of just how great 2010 can be. Stay focused, stay hungry, and of course, mnost of all…

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

To me commenting on blogs is an “American Right”, but moderating those comments is a “Human Right”. Today on Mashable, Stan Schroeder, wrote a nice post titled.. “A New Debate on Blog Comments is Brewing“.. in it he tells the story of the age old debate regarding, to allow or not allow comments on a blog and if so, do you moderate those comments.

Not sure I agree with the “Debate” moniker, seems a bit ”dramatic”, but I do think its a topic that has good content on both sides of the fence. Here is my take, as I commented to it on the above mentioned post…

… “Comments are essential, moderation is as well! Blogging and Commenting represent an online version of a conversation that is being “listened” to by those interested in a topic. Just like any conversation, be it IRL/F2F/ or Cyber, “off color” or “self serving” comments are met with some form of exclusionary tactic. After all, this is one of our basic rights…to choose!”

Basically, what I believe is that everyone should have a voice, we are a democracy after all, but a “Curator” of a blog should have the basic right to eliminate ”off-color” (profane) and/or “off-subject” (self righteous or SPAM related) comments from the blog they own!

Whats your take?

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

I don’t know if it’s 100% accurate, I don’t think anyone has actually done that, but I do know it’s a very good timeline of Social Medias growth points. I am speaking of a great post (that must have taken a long time to write, but is very short and to the point), by Todd Carpenter (@tcar), NAR’s Social Media Director, today on realtynex.us

In the post Todd chronicles his recollection of the events in Social Media for Real Estate, dating back to early in 2004, where he believes in began. Some of the comments give suggestions that it may have actually started as early as 2001, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it gives you a unique perspective from an industry insider, and may help you to develope your own memories!

I highly suggest it as a good read. You should know where it came from, if you want to be a part of where it is going

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

I have now read a number of posts on the Internets hottest subject, the new iPad! BTW, this is why I love the world of Social Media, and believe it is the BOMB! Within minutes I was reading all about a product that hasn’t even been made available for sale yet! I read a post on the 8 reasons why you don’t want one for crying out loud (Good reasons BTW). Today I read this post, on Subtle Nuances, about iPad and in it was this phrase… 

“Two things worth considering for your website are as follows:

1) When the iPhone came out, everyone had to rethink their website for the tiny web browsers. Now, we may need to rethink our websites for the 10″ screen also. What sorts of considerations will you now need to make on your website?

2) While you will be able to watch HD videos on YouTube via the iPad, it does not support Flash. Most think this should not be an issue because of the shift to HTML 5; however, if your are now or are considering in the future using Flash on your website – this may be an issue.”

Are you kidding me? Not an issue? This means if your website uses Flash, it will not be accessable to an iPad user…Doh! Of course this is an issue…Look, I love innovation as much as the next guy, but do some homework before you go out do something rash.

Go to Google, type in “Things wrong with iPad” and I love the iPad, and read some Blogs! Then, do the thing that sets us apart from all the other animals on Gods planet, and THINK FOR OURSELVES!

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

Love this post by Adam Ostrow on Mashable yesterday, stating that Social Media is the #1 priority of companies entering 2010…I wonder why?

I’m not sayin, I’m just sayin!

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

Short Listings Dominating the Orange County Home For Sale Market

As I was reading a post today, by Harrison Klong; Short Listings Dominating the OC Home for Sale Market, I was concerned by the statistic that over 35% of current Orange County Listings are “Short Sales”…Should I be?

The basic definition of a Short Sale is that the home has more debt associated with it, than equity (upside down). meaning that in the Orange County market, where the decline in median home prices was suppossed to be less than the NAtional or California average, we still had 1/3 of our home decline below what we have invested in them.

What’s your opinion?

Stay Blogging my Friends!

The Coach

 

Nice post today by Adam Singer of The Social Buzz. Adam’s point is clear, Social Media Certification is, in his words absurd! In my words, Criminal! here is an excerpt of what Adam said…

“This brings us to today’s topic:  the notion of “certification” in social media.  It’s absurd. The idea of training in using social tools kind of makes sense, I understand some require hands-on assistance as there does still exist a business digital divide (sadly).  But to be certified in social media?  Please.”

As I said, Adam’s word was “absurd”, mine is “criminal”. Why? Simple, in a time where so many people are hungry to understand what SM is, and what it could mean to their business (Example #1, I attended a REALTOR.com “seminar” errrrrr Sales Pitch! in Anaheim last week and over 200 poor bastards attended hoping for some good advice, and after 1 hr of it on Facebook, they then got 3 hours of BUY BUY BUY!)…Ok, I digressed. But what I meant was there is no difference today between so called “certified” “experts” in SM and the Snake Oil Salesmen of yester year!

There are too many of us out there who are willing to give you insight into this world, and that of the Internet, who do it because we love it. Don’t look for me to be “certified” anytime soon, I have all the Snake Oil I need!

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach

While reading a mini-blog by MyEastBayAgent, on his Posterous Blog, I was struck by one particular aspect…MATH!!! Read this excerpt and you tell me what doesn’t compute?

Bank of America expects to release about 6,000 foreclosed properties into the Nevada housing market in 2010, or about 500 a month, an executive with the bank said Wednesday.

Throughout the country, estimates of homes being taken back by Bank of America range from 11,000 to 14,000 a month in the early part of this year to 29,000 to 35,000 by November and December, said John Ciresi, vice president

Ah, HELLO?! release 500 per month, yet you accumulated an average of 20,000 per month! WTH???? and this is good for our economy how? What happens when that other…Oh, I don’t know, 200,000 homes “dumps” onto the market? My Kindergartener knew the answer…”It will be alot!”..Duh! A lot of low cost inventory, to slow appreciation for years to come..

…Give me your thoughts?

Stay Blogging My friends!

The Coach

Great advice from Alex Wilhelm of TheNextWeb.com…

Twitter has put up the blog post on the subject saying that:

We’ve found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it’s important that we suggest things relevant to them. We’ve created a number of algorithms to identify users across a variety of clusters who tweet actively and are engaged with their audiences. These new algorithms help us group these active users into lists of users by interests. Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists. These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed.

This is what it looks like…

Tools like this, while perhaps a bit self-indulging, can be very helpful to “Newbies”. Many Social Networks use tools like this, so explore when you join!

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach