Calgary Agent's Blog: All Categories

January 5, 2007

Figures released yesterday by the Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB) show the year closing with record breaking figures. Year-end combined residential sales for 2006 totaled 32,912, the highest ever recorded in Calgary MLS® history, and an increase of 4.53% over 2005's year-end combined residential figure of 31,485. Total listings for the year, while slow at times, finished at 44,712, surpassing 2005's year end combined listing number of 39,698, an increase of 12.63%.

• December combined residential sales totalled 2,015 (an increase of 7.52% over Dec 2005 and a decrease of 12.88% from Nov 2006)
• Average combined residential sale price* was $361,640 (an increase of 32.35% over Dec 2005 and an increase of about 1/4% from last…

I just finished reading a recent article by Danny Sullivan on the current state of "Link Exchanges" as they apply to Google:

Stop The Freak Out Over Linking

Without going into too much detail, I felt the final paragraph of Sullivan's post pretty much summed up the attitude webmasters should embrace:

Rule 3 - Link to sites because you want your visitors to know about them.

Did you just do a "bad" exchange? Why, just go over to the Google bad link exchange checking tool and find out. Whoops. It doesn't exist. Don't panic! Again, and I mean this in a totally positive way, screw Google. Stop thinking of whether you are doing a link because Google will like or dislike it. Link because your audience will like it. Do right by your audience, and you are…

The Bank of Canada will cut the prime rate by the 2nd quarter of 2007 in an effort to dampen an economic slowdown in the country, according to the Laurentian Bank's economic & financial outlook released today.

The Laurentian report states "downside risks to the Canadian economy outweigh any upside risks and that lower rates will be used to counter an economy in the midst of a significant slowdown."

Laurentian predicts The Bank of Canada will cut the overnight rate to 3.75% by mid-2007 from the current 4.25% "to ensure any economic slowdown is moderate and short-lived".

This is in line with what most experts have been predicting, and will result in Canadian Mortgage Rates falling by approximately the same amount (50 basis… Read Full Post

Pageviews, the metric most webmasters have long used to measure a website's popularity, may be dead, according to Peter Dabolt, Chief of Insights in Yahoo! Opinions, Trends & News.

There was a time in the mid-90's when a page hit was the measurement most used to measure site popularity, but as pages grew and hits multiplied (multiple server hits to load a single page), that metric fell out of favour. Since that time page views and unique visits have been the two most important logs webmasters use to measure their site's popularity.

Not that there's ever been a standardized way to measure page views: Are bots and spiders supposed to be counted? Does a page view occur after a request, or does the page need to be fully loaded?

This dilemma has become even…

A disabled Calgary business owner who sells high end canes over the internet had his website taken down by a suspected international hacker. Just days before Christmas, the busiest time of the year for Llano Gorman, instead of finding orders when he logged onto his site he found pictures of skulls and crossbones and the sounds of ghoulish music. His business email had also been hacked.

The images, music, and site defacing are the work of Jamaycka, a hacker thought to be from Turkey. Jamaycka has taken down or defaced over 6,000 websites, and seems to take pride in his work (always signing off on the website hack). An archive of Jamaycka attacks shows 6,404 to date.

Which begs the question - do you have your shields up?

Six months ago Calgary mother Melissa Hawach said goodbye to her 2 young daughters as they left for a holiday in Australia with her estranged husband, Lebanese national Joseph Hawach. When they failed to return home to Calgary 3 weeks later, the mother was told the children had been taken to war-torn Lebanon, where the man has citizenship, to avoid returning them to their mother.

After months and months of exhausting every legal avenue open to her (Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with Canada), the Calgary woman now finds herself on the run in Lebanon with the 2 girls. She apparently hired 5 ex-British commandos to snatch her daughters back, which they successfully did this past Wednesday. 2 of the mercenaries were arrested later Wednesday at…

After spending 5 days familiarizing myself with my new Blackberry 7130e, I'd say this has to be one of the best smart-phones on the market. There's a fairly steep learning curve - fortunately several of my colleagues have the same phone and saved me hours in setting up and customizing various aspects of the unit.

First, the phone itself works great. Reception and voice quality is superior, and the speaker phone (which can be toggled on/off either by using the click-wheel or the (.) keyboard shortcut) is outstanding. People on the other end remarked at how clear voices were (using it both as a handset and/or speaker phone).

The address book is simple to set up and edit. Names, numbers & email address can be added on the fly (the address book also sync's…

Your weekly update of the Calgary MLS® Sales Stats

Calgary MLS Market Stats: Dec 1 thru 19, 2006 Single Family 2006 2005 Average Selling Price $399,418 $303,151 Median Selling Price $362,000 $265,000 New Listings 896 906 Sales 1,007 980 Sales to New Listing Ratio 112% 108% Sales to Active Listing Ratio 31% n/a …