Ryan Ward's Blog: Atlanta, Georgia

I have searched and searched without success to find a plugin to transform a WordPress blog page into a user friendly way to showcase lisitngs. Until now. It took me about three hours to get it to look right so this will be a tutorial to save time for you if you like it. Before you bother going to far in your reading, take a look at this blog post I created using this plugin to advertise my Brookhaven townhome for sale.

So if you like it here is what you will need:

• FTP access to your WordPress blog
• The slideshow plugin
• Follow the instructions to upload and activate the plugin

O.K. That's the easy part so here is where I will save you some time. This is how my installation went based on a width of 500 pixels for my content box. You…

Do you have buyers sign a Buyer Brokerage Agreement? You should. This is more of a vent and you can look at me as an example if you aren't using an agreement before you show houses. We all know how important it is to get that agreement signed and many of us don't take the time to get it signed right away because we are afraid we are going to lose a potential sale.

What if I told you that you can lose sales by not getting this agreement signed? Would that help you to get it signed? Well, that wasn't enough for me and I knew better. It won't ever happen again though. This year I have lost two sales directly because I did not have this agreement signed. Two. One just happened last night. I'm pissed - at myself. I knew better and I didn't do it. All the usual…

O.K. I'm pretty excited about this because I figured it out on my own (well, with the help of the internet anyway). Last week I figured out how to in bed Google maps into my website so that each city page has an interactive Google map specific to its own area. I thought that was cool, but, then I started poking around at some other websites that have map a map search and thought that it would be a neat idea to showcase only our listings on a map. Really, I was trying to come up with a way to add exposure to our listings. So with that in mind I decided that it would be a good idea to add our listings to the maps. You can take a look at an example of how they look here on our Alpharetta real estate page. So basically I just have one more thing to figure out… Read Full Post

This will be a short post, but, I am just so relieved that my website has finally returned from the penalty levied by Google. I have learned a valuable lesson that will not be forgotten.

Never again will I engage in reciprocal linking schemes set out with the sole intention of gaining improved ranks in the search results. I made some improvements to my Atlanta real estate website since I had the extra time. One feature that I am excited about is the addition of Google maps to all of the city pages and I also learned how to use the snippets in the REW backend so I lightened up the code a bit which will help users because the site loads faster than before. I still have a few more things to do with the snippets before I'm finished, but it also removed some…

Here are the Atlanta real estate market statistics for the month of May. Cities included in this recap include Buckhead, Sandy Springs, Roswell and Alpharetta

As can be clearly seen by theses statistics, Alpharetta not only has many more homes for sale than any of the other areas, but, Alpharetta also has more pending and sold homes as well. For those who like numbers, not graphs, here is the breakdown:

Alpharetta:

• Homes for sale - 1642
• Pending - 454
• Sold - 206

Roswell:

• Homes for sale - 809
• Pending - 234
• Sold - 116

Sandy Springs:

• Homes for sale - 574
• Pending - 127
• Sold - 48

Buckhead:

• Homes for sale - 354
• Pending - 96
• Sold - 52

Let's take a look at the absorption…

O.K. If you don't want to hear a rant then you should leave now! I find it unbelievable that with all of the new construction homes in Atlanta and the surrounding cities that I can only find 1, that's right, 1 new construction ranch home for sale in Alpharetta or Roswell between $600,000 and $900,000. What is wrong with builders in this city? The architectural style of the vast majority of new construction homes all look very similar at this price point. This lack of variety, I believe has helped to contribute to the stagnating market at this price point.

Let's think about this for a minute. Let's say you are approaching middle age or older and want to buy your last home (many people are like this); why would you want to have two flights of stairs in your…

Wow! I wouldn't have thought that this would be necessary, but, I suppose it is important (since I received a couple of phone calls from my last blog entry) to follow up and say something to sellers as well;

Under no circumstances, at any price point or type of home is this a sellers market!

After receiving a couple of phone calls and after numerous homes previewed and shown to buyers recently, it has become apparent to me that sellers can have expectations that are just as unreasonable as buyers. I know, I know - your home is nicer than the one down the street. That's what everyone says. That's also why it isn't true! I don't know if this is the fault of the real estate agents who are listing these homes too high just because they want the listing or if…

Over the past three weeks or so, I have spent a considerable amount of time out with buyers trying to find the right home for them. That hasn't been that hard as in a city the size of Atlanta, there are lots of available homes. The problem, as I see it, is in the mindset of buyers themselves. Let me make this clear:

This is not a buyers market! It's a balanced Market.

O.K. I said it You cannot buy a home in Atlanta for 85% of the asking price. Stop watching the news about the national real estate market. Let me tell you a little bit about what's going on here:

• Interest rates remain near all time historical lows.
• Prices have dropped or have not appreciated in the last year.
• It is the summer - the hottest buying time of the year.…
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