Eric Blackwell's Blog: Southern Indiana Real Estate

"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

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

When I first moved here to Southern indiana from California, my wife told me two very important things about the area, #1--We would ALWAYS live in Indiana and #2--the area around Louisville that I had come to know as Kentuckiana was to be referred to as Indi-ucky...an obvious slap at my friends from Louisville.
i have since heard so many things back and forth about the two that I thought I do a little comparison of my own:

Fact #1--Taxes are lower in Southern Indiana. That's not an opinion, it is what it is. the government take less of your money there.

Fact #2--Schools are good in BOTH areas, but the BEST way to compare schools is to look at the specific school and not the district.

Fact #3--Both areas are VERY good in regards to the cost of… Read Full Post

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, so you are going to use a REALTOR that will list your home on BOTH Louisville and Southern Indiana MLSs. And you are going to ask up front what your REALTOR is going to do to market your home.

Here are some other tips to get great exposure:

Have as many pictures taken of your house as possible! (currently both boards will support up to 20 pictures of your house. This is IMPORTANT! Our internal studies have shown that potential buyers OFTEN ask for more photos BEFORE physically going to look at your house.

In fact, the Louisville MLS averages about 4 photos per house listing, yet the average of  the number of photos where people requested showings on our site was 9 photos! If that doesn't make you want to provide the potential buyers with a GOOD look…

So you are thinking of selling your southern indiana home? Maybe you are moving out of the area? Perhaps you have been transferred to a new location?

Whether yout needs are to get TOP dollar for your home or to get your home sold quickly in a buyer's market, there are three things that will help you get there: EXPOSURE, EXPOSURE, EXPOSURE! (and you thought real estate was all about location, right?)

When you sell, you can't really affect the location of your home, but you CAN get the MOST exposure. Here are 3 tips to get the MOST:

Even though your home is in Indiana, make sure it is listed with an agent who is also licensed AND is a member of Louisville's Board of REALTORS. Why? Because then it will be listed on MANY websites that attract visitors who…