This is just an idea I have been kicking around for the past several days. The trend has been for the past several years that real estate advertising has been moving more and more to the web – it’s cheaper, more effective, more immediate and easier to track results, ie. pageviews, click-throughs, etc. What is going to happen as the market continues its shift? Buyers and sellers will continue to use the internet because of its immediacy and breadth of information, but what about print? I read the WSJ.com every day, but I love (when I have thirty minutes or an hour) to read it in print; I see more stories of interest rather than what I was looking for.I have spent the bulk of my advertising budget on online advertising for some time; now may be the time to re-evaluate that strategy.Buyers are beginning to realize that they have more time to look for homes; homes are staying on the market longer …… It is easier to do this sitting at a coffee shop with a copy of the Real Estate Weekly than with a laptop. Buyers may become more passive and wait for something about a house to spur them on … maintaining a presence in a local real estate weekly may become more of a necessity to be successful from an agent’s and a seller’s point of view.Just a thought.
Date Archives February 2006
Morning reading 02-16-06
I went to the General Assembly yesterday for the Realtors’ Day on the Hill. Thus, I have a great deal of catching up to do, as well as write my thoughts about the experience.The House Transportation PackageDriven to DespairSuing a real estate agent for misrepresentation. Bottom line: do your due diligenceMore mortgage data than you can shake a stick atPlaces29 – public input?
Albemarle Place discussion
Cox: “Interim transportation improvements …Â the improvements that we will be making will help calm the situation for about a 5 year period …Â ” those improvements are temporary …Â adding quite a bit more asphalt to 29 and Hydraulic …Â Jane: “It sounds like the City and County are saying let’s let Albemarle Place be in control of Hydraulic so we don’t have to think about it.”What happens when your development company makes some short-term improvements, what happens when they introduce a grade-separated interchange?
An aggregator for the aggregators?
This story from Curbed verbalizes a question I have been tossing around for some time – with the advent of GoogleBase, Zillow, Craigslist, Propsmart, opening MLS’s, how is one supposed to search them all? How about this? Edgio.com – The way Edgeio works is that bloggers would post items they want to sell right on their blogs, tagging them with the word “listing” (and eventually other descriptive tags). Then, Edgeio will pluck them as it constantly crawls millions of blogs looking for the “listing” tag and index them on Edgeio.com.Hmmmm … Google may or may not be the end-all-be-all after all.This is a good article analyzing the potential impact of Zillow:Zillow.com may have an impact on the real estate industry — but it will be a mixed bag for consumers. If anything, it may have the effect of dampening home prices somewhat by arming the buyer with more negotiating power to dicker for lower prices. But take the place of the realtor who is actively marketing the home? I don’t think so.
Crozet Town meeting and other Growth musings
I have had a hard time working up this, as the two and a half hour meeting on Thursday night seemed to be so much of the same conflict, same discussions, same end result.For a fact-based account and podcast, see CvilleTomorrow.There was no question and answer session, as those questions posed were directed at the BoS; when given the opportunity to stand and respond, Crozet’s Supervisor chose to remain seated.The best way to summarize the meeting is to say that little was said or presented that helped to alleviate or mitigate the uncertainty that exists. To paraphrase one of the commenters (listen at 8:00 of this podcast) When questioned, the County gives the pat answer of “well, it’s in the Master Plan” yet, Wickham Pond is shown as an environmental set-aside on the Master Plan map … why was this taken from five by-right units to 107 units, the answer the planning department gave was “the master plan is just a guide …… we need a firm plan.”It is hard to answer clients’ (and my wife’s and neighbors’) questions about the future of Crozet’s growth as no one seems to really know…. From a recent (and on-going discussion) with someone who is seeking to relocate to the CharlAlbemarle area from NoVa: If C’ville continues to try to imitate No VA (i.e. concerns centering around Crozet development, developers squeezing in as great a density as permitted—well there goes the QOL and the neighborhood). Again, I reiterate, it’s the “country” of Charlottesville with the little flair of charm, artsy craftsy, good restaurants, etc. created by UVA in downtown and “clean,pure wine country, that is C’ville. If you haven’t been to NoVA lately—come and see us—particularly at rush hour. You’ll get a jolt of reality and what you DON’T want to see happen to C’ville along with all the apparent wishful thinking of many of your folks in the real estate/development industry who seem to be chomping at the bit to try to ignite.Well said.
Green building
Making “green” choices -There is an upward trend in the number of “green” products available and inWhen one chooses to purchase green products, one typically is choosing to pay more than a competetive, non-green or traditional product.
So much to blog …
So little time …I read so much every day and my “blog this!”… in that vein, here are a few of the things that I have been reading lately that are applicable to the Central Virginia real estate market in at least some form or another.This really deserves its own post: Land use regulations cause housing prices to increase. “The database and the housing report show that the regulatory obstacles are especially onerous for higher-density and smart growth projects. We are losing environmentally and we are losing our competitive edge. We need a drastically different approach if we want to maintain our quality of life.â€YIMBY – avoiding the “NIMBY” attitude.We have so much of the “NIMBY” mindset in this region that oftentimes, good development is lost or chooses not to even attempt to come. What we may have left are those entities that have the time, money, patience and attorneys to outlast public opposition and governmental inefficiencies.If more developers used these tactics, I’ll bet that there would be better developments.Wooing locals is nothing new to developers, though they often received a rubber stamp to build shopping centers and residential complexes as cities grew in the past 50 years. Today, however, the best prospects are increasingly urban and suburban redevelopment projects, on land often surrounded by residents with the money, the know-how and the will to fight. As a result, developers must run something akin to a political campaign to get their projects approved — and in the process, give residents much of what they demand.Loudoun County as a proving ground for how not to grow.How Loudoun deals with its growth can teach the rest of the country a great deal,” says James DeFrancia, a trustee of the Urban Land Institute.