Spoken Gently's Blog: For Realtors

Today, the AP reports second quarter home prices drop the largest since the inception of Standard & Poor's Case/Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index. The drop is 15.4 percent lower than last year. I'm reminded of this blog entry!

The Tri Cities Washington market, however, is maintaining property values. Actually, Washington state as a whole, isn't too bad either! Never a better time to buy property in the Tri Cities than now!

Related:

• Standard & Poor/Case Shiller Home Price Indices

• CNN Money - Home Prices Plummet To New Record Low
   

Matt Cutts was the keynote speaker for the Web 2.0 Expo held in San Francisco on April 22-25, 2008. This video is Matt's keynote address about Google's spam policy and is a great introduction to search engine spam for beginners, as well as a relevant reminder for seo veterans. I hope you find this 10 minute video useful! You can find other 2008 Web 2.0 Expo videos of keynote presentations here.

Mayhill Fowler went form obscurity to the national stage and possibly changed the course of the presidential election. Fowler, a 61 year old self proclaimed journalistic blogger, recorded Obama's now famous Bittergate speech, blogged about it, and the rest is history. To everyone's surprise, Fowler received more attention for her piece than possibly imagined. You can read about Mayhill Fowler and her Bittergate blogging here.

Goes to show what blogging can accomplish when posting information everyone wants to read! 

Here's a cool free tool for your blogging toolbox. The pixel ruler! When needing to know the width of your content area, simply paste the following code in your blog entry then post to your blog, Squidoo page, HubPage, etc:

<p align="left"><img src="http://www.joelane.com/images/pixel-ruler.jpg" alt="Pixel Ruler" width="653" height="21" /></p>

You'll end up with a ruler like this:

I'll use the pixel ruler to determine the width of my content area to let me know how wide an image can be inserted. Once you have figured out your dimensions, simply delete the code and you are ready to insert your image. You'll notice the ruler suggests this REW blog is 655 pixels wide. It's not! The REW blogs are about 575 pixels wide, however, images larger than 575…

Washington Realtors® are printing first time homebuyers brochures and making them available to all Washington Realtor® members free of charge. Stop by your local association and get a few before they run out, as the promotion is limited to the supply that is available. Washington Realtor® will be running radio commercials the entire month of April encouraging first time homebuyers to get the facts about buying their first home and to contact a Realtor® for a free brochure. Be that real estate agent!

The brochure outlines seven steps to home ownership. The first step is to contact a Realtor® (that's you!). Then, step by step Washington Realtor® takes the reader through the process of determining how much home they can afford, how to shop for a loan and…

Happy Easter everyone. Consider the true meaning of Easter today. A YouTube Easter music video for you.  Again, may you have a wonder full Easter day! 

Are you too busy to read the real estate article you just stumbled upon but want to read? Recently, I found Instapaper, a service that allows you to click "Read Later" and when convenient, read later! In a nutshell, once installed, a button appears on your internet browser toolbar. When surfing the web, simply click the button and links to articles you have noted will be available for further reading at Instapaper's website. Essentially, a "favorites" type of utility, but for articles only. I've found this service useful, as I often find non-relevant real estate related articles that I want to read, but are too busy, and/or too focused on the task at hand to read now!  Check it out: Register

For years I've been concerned with the direction our country is headed. With the recent mortgage industry problems my concerns have increased. I read an article about The Coming Financial Collapse of America where the author outlines the future collapse of America largely as a result of the domino effect the real estate industry is creating. In the article, Mike Adams makes a prediction for 2008-2012:

"My prediction for 2008 - 2012 is a massive wave of municipal bankruptcies, state bankruptcies and escalating national debt. We are going to see cities and states go belly up, pension programs terminated (or watered down), and financial institutions teetering on the brink of disaster."

Mike Adams isn't too far off in his assessment of our economy. His…