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The past week has been very hectic and busy with getting our son back in the school routine after spring break, a closing and more feng shui house hunting.  I am pleased to report I think we have found a house for my clients and, most likely, we will be making an offer tomorrow or Monday.  Today, I have an interview with a potential new member of our real estate group and later this afternoon Michael and I are hosting a small birthday celebration for our friend Joe Weber.  He was disappointed we didn’t list his birthday in my April Newsletter so I thought he should, at least get a blog mention.  Happy Birthday Joe!  We hope you have many more and we are around to help celebrate!

Lots of news about our real estate market taking another turn for the worse…

Every day is an opportunity to learn something new and it never ceases to amaze me where and how this comes about.  Last week I was talking and sharing what I have learned about Web 2.0 and social networking sites.  Today, I am writing about the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui (pronounced in English as “fung shway”). 

I have been thoroughly enjoying working with some clients who are moving to this area and looking for their new home.  They have introduced me to the complexities of feng shui and I am determined to learn more and use that knowledge to help them find a home.  I started writing about what I am learning as a blog post but it quickly grew into an article for my column over at Rocklin and Roseville Today.  Take a look at “Fung Shui House…

We were disappointed to see Gina Glocksen get booted from American Idol this week.  She clearly is a better singer than some of the others who are moving on and one of the more interesting entertainers.  My prediction for the winner is Melinda Doolittle who seems to be in a league of her own.  With the counter American Idol movement it will be interesting to see how the votes come out.

Yesterday, I watched a demonstration of the new Google Maps feature, My Maps, and thought I give it a try.  After a few false starts I was able to complete a “mashup” and create a map of my current listings.  It is kind of cool but as you will find when you click on one of my pins, it takes the photo too long to load.  Overall it is a nice feature and I see some good uses…

Here is a few more of the social networking site we are using.  As you will see some of them are to support the business and others are for fun/personal use:

·         MySpace – Julie Jalone

·         Point2Agent – This is a real estate agent webpage I use to develop some of my listing pages and to publish to other real estate sites.

·         Ning – We joined this community to pay respects to a formal colleague of Michael’s who died and have just added my profile.

·         Classmates.com – I have been tracking my high school reunion

·         Digg – We have not done much with this site but it has a great deal of potential.

Even I am surprised the number and variety of the social network sites we have or are using.  I still have a few more to add…

With all the hoopla about the new Star Wars stamps and mail boxes that resemble R2D2 I discovered this morning that a first class postage stamp is going from 39 cents to 41 cents next month!  I think the stamps are cool, and I will use them on my June Newsletter but, darn sending a letter is getting expensive!

I am busy this week, today I am showing new homes to our MyForSaleSign heroine, Randi.  We saw some wonderful homes on Saturday and want to compare those to new construction.  Check out the MyForSaleSign blog for the latest update.  Tomorrow I will be working with some clients who are moving to the Sacramento area and looking for a new home.  In addition I have some interviews set up for this week for potential new team members that came as a result…

In my last post I mentioned Twitter and promised to list a few more.   There must be someone other than Michael that will sign up and add me as a friend?  Oh well, some to the things we try are for fun anyway.  Here are a couple of other social network sites I am using:

·         Flickr Photos:  Julie’s Real Estate Photos  and Michel’s Photos

·         Squidoo:  Julie’s Lens (This one is fun and when I have more time would like to play with it more)

·         Real  Estate Voices:  Search for Julie Jalone (This is a site where you can post news and other stories)

·         MyBlogLog:   JulieJ BlogLog - This is a site where bloggers can find each other  - they have some fun widgets but I have found “real estate blogging” is not very popular.  For traffic…

We had nice mention in a recent industry news outlet, Inman News. They wrote a three part story about Realtors using some of the social network sites. We are in part three, Industry experiments with social networking sites: Social media and real estate. I was with clients when the reported called so he talked with Michael who was perfect since he does a lot of the planning and work for our web presence. One of the sites he talked about that we are trying is Twitter. Take a look at it and if you join make sure you add me as a friend. You can see my Twitter home page here. Over the next few days I’ll list some of the other websites we are using and thinking about using. Read Full Post

I did get a chance to look at some of the results for the Sacramento real estate market for last month and completed my review, “Where are we going?”  Over the next few days I will look closer to home and examine the Roseville and Rocklin communities.