Eric Blackwell's Blog: All Categories

My last REW blog post was about (of all things...) the keywords that we use nowadays that were not used before. Terms like "Short Sale" were simply not in the lexicon until recently.

As part of that post, I made mention of my friend (and REALTOR) in our office, Anne Mayhugh. I wrote about her experience with investment properties in Louisville and how she really knows her stuff. Little did I know that this would reach someone who was looking for someone just like Anne to help her. I received a blog message via email this past weekend from the NICEST person.

Here is a little of what she wrote:

"Hi Eric, I saw your blog and am interested in getting in contact with Anne. If you could forward this information to her, I'd greatly appreciate it. I am a…

365 days ago, the term "short sale" was just barely a blip on the lexicon. Now, everyone seems to know what they are. I had an internet lead the other day from our main site asking specifically. "I need short sale help. Please call me." (that's a quote).

I don't know about your market, but in Louisville, the foreclosure market is picking up big time. One member of our blogging team jumped in and created a Louisville Short Sales and Real Estate Investing Blog. (Great Job Anne, BTW). She has actually been on this side of the business for years and is an awesome agent IMO.

Since being on our team comes with a few **cough** advantages **cough**, she made it up to #2 on Google for the term "Louisville Short sales" (relatively little competition there) along…

Well, we finally did it! We rolled out a new Open House section last week for our site. The goal was to create a place for the 120 agents in our office to be able to post their open houses that would provide them traffic and exposure far beyond the levels of the Louisville Courier Cournal (local paper).

One nice thing about having 120 agents in your office is that they have a lot of open houses! Currently on our site we have 23 open houses scheduled for this weekend! Each open house has a date and time, brief decsription, driving directions and contact information for the showing agent in case people want to come early to view the properties.

One of the challenges of this project is keeping it current. We pull open houses currently from theMLS and enter…

I really enjoy sharing some of the more creative things that some of the 120 REALTORS in our office do. They are amazing. One of the more unique and creative teams for us is the Medley - Sokoler Team. They are always coming up with new and inventive ways to effectively brand themeselves.

The funny part about a slower market is that it typically has one of two effects on people. Either they spend more time hanging out at the office and commenting on the economic weather, or they "double down" and use the available time to dig even harder to differentiate themselves. Bob called some of his favorite past clients, asked them to visit him at the office and as fast as you can say "Bob's your uncle." He created a testimonial video. Bob just sent me the ROUGH…

As winners of the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World SEO contest, Team Eric has chosen to raffle off the generous prize of one template REW site with CORE IDX -- Hosted for life!

Special thanks to Morgan Carey and REW for the prize . We will be promoting it all over the real estate internet space and hold the raffle on June 1st 2008.

NOTE: There are restrictions as to who can win the prize! We want it to go to a REALTOR who can truly use it to its potential.

All of the proceeds from the raffle go to the Eco Preservation Society of Costa Rica.  Entries are $35 for one or $100 for 4!

Heres the link to the PayPal info and Rules and Regs for the Raffle!

Thanks for the great prize Morgan!

Best;

Eric

Many of you know that I am not a fan of third party sites, like Trulia, Zillow, hey, even REALTOR.com for that matter. But there is one thing that is getting out of hand that needs to be addressed and the Realtor community made aware of.

Galen Ward wrote an excellent post on the Bloodhound Blog exposing Trulia for link hoarding in an effort to get the top spot on the search engines for many of the addresses in the country. The response to that has been the usual corporate spin of "what...us???" "We wouldn't do that!" and etc.

Then came the topper. One of the trulia guys had the gall to say that they were not returning the favor of a link because they didn't want us "spamming" them...WHAT?

Hey Trulia! as REALTORS it is OUR information. Who died and…

Well,  it almost is!

According to my understanding, the contest gets over at midnight on this coming Wednesday. it cannot be soon enough! Not because I don't like hanging out with the team (grin). They have been great and we will be hanging out a lot in the upcoming future. More just because I am road weary. 3 months is a long time to have this on the back of your mind.

I have learned a lot and made new friends along the way. For the record, I think that SEO contest like this are kind of like a dance that my middle school aged kids might go to. They have the potential for the experience to be good or bad. If you join in the fun and make friends, they can be unbeleivably fun. If you are a wallflower or hang back and do not dig in to what is going in, it…

One of the things that many people don't realize about the Kentucky Derby is that is is actually about 3 weeks long!. No I am not kidding. Every year, the Derby festival starts with Thunder over Louisville and culminates with the actual race. Here is a video of Thunder over Louisville.

It is (reportedly) the largest fireworks display in the U.S. (the calm parts feel like the finales of most fireworks shows) and I can tell you first hand that it is fun. You can see for yourself what the finale is like...amazing! Between the airshow that goes on all day and this, it is a huge family event. It is also one of the reasons I like living here. Enjoy!

Best;

Eric