Eric Blackwell's Blog: All Categories

The greatest compliment for a condominium unit is that the REALTOR who is selling it actually lives there. That way they are not asking you to do something that they haven't. Joann Rankin feels that way about the Clifton Lofts condos.

She has been there from the start, lives there now and plans to be there for a long time to come. When you buy a condminium, you buying neighbors as well as a home! One way that Joann introduces prospective buyers to the other condo owners is to host parties on the rooftop garden! (BTW-This is another of my FAVORITE features of this place!

What intrigues me about the Clifton Lofts is their location. Frankfort Ave. is right in the heart of Louisville's urban scene and yet outside of the typical downtown or riverfront.…

One of our agents, Michal Kruger came into my office the other day and started showing me pictures of one of her listings...2174 Park Boundary Road.

if you know one thing about me, it is that I like to cook. My son Craig and I cook together all of the time and our entire family likes to hang ou together in the kitchen. Well, since I am the technologist for a real estate office, I thought I had seen everything. Boy was I wrong!

Check out the kitchen--chock full of GE Monogram appliances...and gold leaf trimmed cabinets...

(note--the picture does not do this kitchen justice--it's to die for...)

and here's the kicker...a glass floor that looks down into a climate controlled wine cellar...amazing!

I don't even drink and…

The Southern Indiana MLS is coming! The MLS is coming! Our site will soon have bothLouisville and Southern Indiana MLS listings available for clients on both sides of the river!

Why am I so excited about this...well, for starteds, I actually live in Utica and have lived in Southern Indiana for the past 10 years. I have watched our real estate values suffer simply because out of town potential buyers get their MAIN exposure only to Louisville homes and the southern Indiana homes only get incidental exposure.

RE/MAX Properties East is going to change all of that. We have the #1 Most trafficked real estate website in Louisville, with over 330,000 home searches done in 2006. We have #1 Search engine exposure on Google.  I have included a link from a Google…

OK, I realize that there are two types of people that read my blog: REALTORS  and People looking for homes in the Louisville area. For the sake of this post only, I'd like to hear comments back from just people looking for homes only and NOT from REALTORS,

Sometimes those of us in the business use terms like IDX, MLS, and map based searching to describe the type of home search we are providing to you online. I'd like to try something different. I have listed below three typical home searches that you can do to find your new home.

Some are more complicated yet fancy.

Some are more simple yet basic and easy to understqand. 

What I'd like you to do is to look at these three searches and leave me your comments about them. And I don;t want to hear from…

So you want a New Home in the Louisville Kentucky area. Where do you start? if you have never built a new home before (or had a new home built for you before...) Then it can be a very frustrating time.

You have a vision of what you want, but how can you bring that vision to reality? How to choose (objectively) the right neighborhood?  All I can tell you is where I would start...

First I'd look at the location...a REALTOR can be of great help here because your new home's value is as much determined by the quality of the other neighborhood homes as it is by the quality of its own construction...Think about that for a minute...

If you build a QUALITY Louisville area new home and it is in a neighborhood of lesser quality homes then YOUR new home's value is…

1031 Exchanges are effective methods of transferring real estate wihout incurring undue capital gains taxes. Sounds great, right? But there's a lot more to it than meets the eye! Miss a deadline or incorrectly put this type of transaction together and you have not only negated any good --you can cost yourself THOUSANDS in taxes as well. 

There is a field guide to putting 1031 transactions together that is FREE and available at the National Association of Realtors site that I have linked below.

One of the REALTORS in our office who specializes in investment property and Tax efficient transactions is Joe "The Real Estate Guy" Hampton.

He has been a long time member of the Kentucky Real Estate Investors Association and has the experience of many 1031…

One of the agents in our office just built a VERY COOL website for people to find private schools in the Louisville Kentucky metro area. His name is Matt Brown and I thought his site and effort were worth noting. His site is LouisvillePrivateSchoolGuide.com . While I have no ownership or connection to the site, he hired another local web developer to create it and I thought they did a pretty darn good job.

Enjoy!

For a real estate investor, nothing is more powerful than information. You'd like to know how much someone owes on a proptery, when it was last sold and MANY other tidbits of info that will help you get the best deal.

Here's a quick place to look up ALL courthouse documents online in Jefferson County. It is jeffersonCountyClerk.org. Go to the "Online Land Records" section and you can look up ALL court documents quickly and easily!

It is a great resource for the investor and a good tool! I will post here more about what you can do with this tool--like looking up default notices--(hint , hint!) in my next post.

In my opinion, our county clerk has done a GREAT job of making real estate research easier and more efficient!