Carolyn Gjerde-Tu's Blog: All Categories

I've seen the same questions come up over and over again in the forums-how can I find out who's linking to me?  Are those links followed? How do I know what I'm looking at in the search engines is the same thing my clients or potential clients are looking at? 

I'm very happy these questions kept popping up because I had no clue what people were talking about when I first saw some of the terms.  Whether you hire out to do your SEO or do it yourself, it is important that you have some idea of how search engine optimization works to help you get the most out of your website.  It is not very likely that your site will start seeing excellent results without some work from someone.

Here are three tools that will help answer the basic questions.. 

1.  If your…

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The ability to view all open homes in Davis is now available on my website.  There has been a push to move away from print advertising and publish open houses in places where more buyers are going to see them - online. 

Discover Davis Homes now has an open house page where all open houses, regardless of listing office are listed.  This information is updated daily but please be aware that because open houses are typically only held on the weekends, there may not be any information listed in the middle of the week. 

Open houses are popular in Davis and many buyers visit repeatedly until they find the right house.  Visiting open houses is also one way for homeowners to stay in touch with the market.  Be sure to stop by the page often when you are…

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I've been asked by several people if my site, Discover Davis Homes is a custom Real Estate Webmasters site - it's not.  I don't think it even looks close to a custom site but I have been asked by more than one person.   It is a template site with quite a few modifications. 

I am happy with this site - it is hyperlocal-meaning it is focused right now on basically one area, Davis, CA -although I'm trying to expand it out to include more of the Sacramento region.

In no particular order here is a list of most of the modifications - the majority done after the site went live in September 2007.

1. Custom snippets - foreclosures, shortsales, price range adjuster, keyword snippet.

2. Updated to a wide format

3. Upgraded to CMS2 and recently added the control…

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The City of West Sacramento across the river from Sacramento is pretty typical for the region.  There have been many homes in pre-foreclosure or taken back by the lender.  While West Sacramento has a lot going for it and is a very conveient location to downtown  Sacramento, this was an area with a lot of subprime loans.  Here are some housing statistics for West Sac. for the past 6 months.

 

All Properties West Sac North 6 months   June 08 Nov 08 % Change For Sale 67 51 -23.9%  Sold 15 12 … Read Full Post

I thought it might be fun to document the process of working on my new LEC2 site.   Everyone keeps telling me how lucky I am because I get to start this site from scratch.  I keep looking at a blank template that has no customizations yet and thinking where do I start.

Well I'm really behind already and all I was supposed to do was supply a phone number, logo and give input on photos that I want for the slideshow.

I liked the colors in the standard site so I decided not to make any changes.  One problem I did not anticipate is that the blue/green and burnt red color are not easy to match up with photos for the slide show.  I guess I have a reputation to live up to based on feedback I get from my Davis Real Estate site so I have felt some pressure to pick…

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The City of Davis is in the early stages of considering a green building ordinance in which would require homes and buildings to comply to a certain standard at the point of sale. The City, Natural Resources Commission and the Planning Commission are only exploring this issue at this time, but are investigating different methods and measures to reduce the total greenhouse emissions in Davis to levels found in 1990.

First, I and all the Real Estate Agents I know are strongly for improving air quality and environmental standards in Davis but there is strong opposition in the real estate community for these types of changes to be mandated at the time of sale.

According to Gregory Mahoney, Assistant Building Official for the City of Davis, there are…

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Wild Wings is a development of newer homes most located on one of the two golf courses, Wildwings and Fliers Club.  The Flier's Club also has a private airport that has been in operation since the 1920's.

Wild Wings is located about half way between Woodland and Esparto and about 30 miles from Sacramento.  Most of the homes were built between 2003 and 2006 and they are large production built homes by both JTS and Morrison homes.

Come see if this is the community for you.  Learn more about  Wild Wings Real Estate

 

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I've talked about the higher end Sacramento market before.  Due to all of the foreclosures (many of them at the entry level part of the market) there are fewer move up buyers which has created a strong buyers market at the upper end.  Not to paint too grim a picture but take a look at the following trendgraphix facts and trends report for Sacramento County for homes priced over $750,000.

The light green bar represents active listings, red line are pending sales and dark green are closed sales.  There are less than half the number of pending sales in October 2008 than there was in October 2007.  Another way to look at this data is months of inventory:

 

 

 

 

While most people would look at these numbers and see only negatives, I see…

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