judyo's Blog: In The Trenches

I've had this problem many times over the years and I hate when I see on listing instructions that the agent needs to set the appointment.  They rarely answer their cell phones and you have to leave a voice mail.  And some don't respond.

I'm just shocked that in this market some agents don't respond in a timely manner to set appointments.  I had a request to show one property a prospect found on my new custom REW IDX.  I found out when the buyer wanted to view the property and went to set the appointment. 

A couple of days went by without a response from the agent.  I spoke to the buyer, who found another property to view, that the agent had to set all appointments and wasn't responding.  He was able to view the other property.

On the 3rd day I finally…

It's not quite finished yet as I need to add some more search features and more data in the Detailed Report, but I'm just giddy about my new REW custom IDX.  It's too soon to start appearing on the search engines for specific listings and I'm wondering how long it takes to get some of those new pages spidered and indexed.  I believe my page count has about doubled but I don't remember exactly how many were shown as being indexed before.

Fun With Snippets

I thought I needed to call Morgan to get a step-by-step guide to using snippets but one day when I had nothing going on I sat down and tried them out and found success.  I love being able to show all of the Orland Park homes for sale starting right on the Orland Park page.

I'm still working the snippets…

I don't care how good a real estate agent one is, we all run into sellers that just won't listen to us about price.  I can sit there with factual information, thinking I'm getting through, only to be told that they want to list at $25,000 or more than my Comparative Market Analysis gave as market value.  And when that happens, I walk away.

I'm starting to collect good articles and posts I've found regarding price.  I had many in my Firefox Favorites but lost them when I cleaned up my computers.  Some I still had saved were no longer on good urls.

So I'm starting again and will list a couple good articles I found:

• Marc Rasmussen wrote a good one on REW that sounds like a recent NAR article I read called "10 Tips to Pricing Your Home in a Down…

If I had all the time in the world I'd have even more blogs and websites than I do now.  I love having different looks, niches and skins/templates.  To me, geek that I am, having a collection of pretty looking websites/blogs is right up there (and may have surpassed) my love for shoes.

So I feel like a giddy kid at Christmas (I'm a cheap date) to find new skins for my Gmail account.  Right now I'm loving the Desk theme and the Teahouse is a pretty color but you can't see any graphics until you scroll all the way down with that one. 

I'm not sure which theme it is, but at least one changes from day to night and asks you where your location is.  I think if it's raining where you are it will rain in your Gmail theme!  Want wet e-mails?

Another favorite…

I'm certainly not as busy as I'd like to be but there was a big lull in my area for awhile.  All of a sudden, a few of my listings were getting a nice amount of showings and one of my Tinley Park homes for sale just got a contract.  That was a nice one since the sellers already purchased a new townhouse and are living apart - one in the townhouse and one in the house (many people don't realize that their Home Owner's insurance probably doesn't cover a vacant property).  This couple isn't taking the chance.

Another thing I noticed is the amount of my VOW sign-ups (VOW requires registration) has gone up recently. In fact, I had an e-mail conversation with an Active Rainer about a new lead generating program he started using called Growth Leader.  He told me…

I'm walking away from more listings lately than ever.  More this year than in all the 25 years I've been in the biz.  And I'll keep doing it when sellers won't face the facts.

I was on a listing appointment for Blue Island real estate last week.  It was a legal 2-flat that looked like a single family residence with a 3 bedroom unit on the main level and a 1 bedroom unit upstairs.  The sellers lived in another home and needed to get one of their properties sold.  They said whichever one sells first means they'll keep and live in the other one.

I explained today's Buyer's Market to them and showed them all of the comparable listings.  However, this was a unique set-up so I got as close to their unit as possible.  They seemed to understand, even though…

Wow!  Talk about the power of the Internet.  You haven't been reading too many blogs or fourms lately if you haven't heard about Marc Rasmussen vs. SAR MLS (Sarasota Multiple Lisitng Service).  To quickly summarize, SAR MLS wants Marc to hand over his long-held domain name, thesarasotamls.com.  You can read the original post that started fellow REALTORS to unite here: Sarasota Multiple Listing Service (SAR MLS).

And let's not forget Marc's new domain name for Sarasota homes for sale.  Marc took down his original domain which caused this brouhaha and simply wants to be able to redirect it to his new domain.  After all, he is the owner of the domain in question.

This has made other real estate agents very mad!

And they've been writing about it.  There…

In the last few years I've been interviewed by several local newspapers for different articles.  It all started when an article regarding a lost domain name was published in the Wall Street Journal.  That was syndicated all over the nation and was picked up by The Chicago Sun Times and the Daily Southtown.  The Daily Southtown even did a second story with a photo!  I was also featured on a local radio station regarding that story.

Once I got that second Daily Southtown article I started getting interviewed for real estate related stories.  I've saved all of the interviews that I found.  The problem is that they don't always tell you when the story will be published.

I was even on television this year (regarding my blogs on hypermiling) on WYCC on a…