Eric Blackwell's Blog: All Categories

OK...Here's is my final rant on R.com...

It is really my own beef with semantics, but it is important in my view...

Enhanced listings on REALTOR.com

In my view we send you guys at REALTOR.com freshly minted new listing EVERY DAY off of the assembly line. They are COMPLETE with good descriptions, tons of data and more than a few photos. We do our best as REALTORS to market the home online....Then you guys go and and do this with them...





















You mangled the comments and reduce the photos to only one! Then we get a phone call from your sales team that says..."How about we put it back to original condition for say "$1,200 bucks a year" (hypothetical, but REAL example).

Tell me REALTOR.com ... is this truly…

Read Full Post

The Bloodhound Blog recently published one of their (IMO) funniest posts yet. I read Greg's blog for comic relief, but these guys and gals can truly write and have exhibited some real talent. This post was less writing and more graphic...ummm....literally! That graphic was hilarious! But also carried a message.

After reading the post, I felt inspired to write a post of my own. (see the comments of the link above).

While the message was funny, the point of it is pretty clear: to me. REALTOR.com is going to keep raising prices and offering little for the consumer in terms of solid information when compared to most individual REALTOR websites. My preference is for the local real estate agents to win here. Drastic changes are needed at R.com to turn this… Read Full Post

"Yellow journalism" was a phrase coined in the 1800's to describe the press taking liberties and pushing their own views on the people. And when they did not like someone or their point of view, simply running a smear campaign was what happened.

In my opinion, the Louisville real estate market is suffering somewhat from visit back to those dark days.How else do you describe the onslaught of real estate articles promoting doom and gloom. The Courier-Journal has been a veritable negative news factory--and all of this in a market that has actually outperformed last year in the dollar volume of homes sold.

Recently Joe Simms, current president of GLAR, went back on the offensive and received some positive press for his efforts. Kudos Joe. I applaud your… Read Full Post

The Louisville rental market is getting ready to ROLL. Why do I say that?

Think about it. Over the last few years, whoever wanted a house (and had a pulse could buy one. With the changes in the loan market, we now are in a position where many otherwise decent people now can no longer buy their own home. For those with cash and good credit, it's

TIME TO BUY, PEOPLE!

What are we seeing? GREAT deals on the market. Homes that will ACTUALLY cash flow and less and less folks to buy them. The banks are getting nervous about their inventories of REO and it is time to move in my opinion. The choices haven;t been better in a long time and there is a ready market of people to rent to.

All that having been said, the same rules still apply. Caveat Emptor.… Read Full Post

One of our agents came into my office the other day with a quite a tale to tell. Seems she had just gotten out of a closing on an investment property for one of her clients that ended about as wierd as she had seen, so she decided to tell me about it.

The home was rather dilapidated but the investor client of hers wanted it anyway. So the price was agreed to and the bank he bought it from sold it "as-is". There was a small lien on the property as reported by the title search, but the day before the closing, the agent did one last check on the online courthouse records. She found another small lien.

She brought it to the attention of the closing attorney so that any proceeds could be adjusted. The attorney left the room to call the city government to… Read Full Post

One of the things that I have wanted to do for quite a while is post about the office that I work at. It is truly and amazing place. The people that work here are amazing. 120 of the best real estate agents in Louisville. They all have their own business plans and agendas. And yet they get along, work together and help each other every day.

It never ceases to amaze me.

The building is pretty cool too. Not many single real estate offices can say that they do over $400 Million in real estate transactions every year for the past 8 years. Here are a couple of pictures of the building itsself:

  

In the second picture you can see the "auditorium". That's where everyone hangs out, learns together and deals are done. There are computers all around the edge…

Read Full Post

It's been killing me.

My normal commute from Southern Indiana is about 30 minutes to my office in Louisville. I LOVE the drive. It is a pleasant trip down the Ohio River to the Kennedy Bridge and across to  Louisville. All of that has been thoroughly messed up by a month long construction project on I-64 that has snarled traffic and put much more congestion in Southern Indiana. Folks from Utica and Jeffersonville (like me), end up getting stuck on the bridge  and I have had to leave home EXTRA early and leave work EXTRA late to avoid the crunch.

Now for the good news:

The good folks at the government did a very smart thing. Realizing that they were crimping the style of us Southern Indiana folks, they offered an incentive (a LARGE one) to the… Read Full Post

Why are condominiums and patio homes remaining strong in today's real estate market? In my opinion, it goes back to the basics of supply and demand. While home sales are strong in Louisville, the inventory levels keep rising...meaning that there is an inevitable reckoning coming where the two must meet up again.

So I started researching at our local board of REALTOR  for which segments of the market had the lowest inventory / sales ratios. Condominiums and patio homes in Louisville and particularly  in the  East  End of Louisville had the most demand and the least supply!

if you have a condo to sell, this still means marketing, but it is an encouraging thing to see these market levels more in balance than the rest of the market. Read Full Post