Local builder -vs- national builders in the Charlottesville areaMold -vs- asbestos -vs- radonNational real estate websitesBlog -vs- RSS -vs- PodcastCharlottesville -vs- AlbemarleMLS -vs- FSBO – interestingly, all of the top cities are from Canada. In essence, Google Trends gives another means by which to present one’s argument with one’s own manipulation of statistics.
Date Archives May 2006
Links for 12 May 2006
Population data (HT: Business Pundit)Charlottesville (“and surrounding area”) is #90Charlottesville is the 39th “Smartest Place to Live” per Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.North Pointe saga continues. As reported by Cville Tomorrow. My reports say that those in favor of the project moving forward far outnumbered those opposed. The forthcoming podcast will prove enlightening.Google Trends – an extraordinary means by which to peer inside the psyche of searchers. See: Housing BubblePrint -vs- Web -vs- BloggingAn index of SprawlZillow shows a little bit more of its hand – where will they go from here?Finally, a blast from the past:Nevertheless, technology alone isn’t the solution to the arcane world of real estate. “The business of working with realtors is complex,” said Barker. “This is a very fragmented business and realtors have lots of needs and they are expensive to service.”Plus, it is an industry that is very sensitive to relationships and to traditions and practices such as various MLS rules that are dissimilar from market to market.
Searching for homes getting easier
The advent of Zillow, Trulia, RealestateABC, et…. is pushing real estate technology innovation faster than it has ever been pushed. The news today that Cendant will be offering Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mapping on its websites is big news. (Don’t count MSFT out yet!) The mapping wars are just heating up. The guys at RCG are ahead of the curve – watch them.Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will provide its Virtual Earth commercial online mapping solutions for Cendant’s real estate brand Web sites – Century21.com, ColdwellBanker.com, ColdwellBankerCommercial.com, ERA.com and SothebysRealty.com – and for the local operating company Web sites of NRT Incorporated.The sooner Microsoft decides to support Firefox (or better yet, web standards) and makes their products accessible to all, the better. As a consumer, whether snooping on neighbors, searching for homes, or just checking up on the market, what are you looking for? What does the end game of the merging of real estate and technology look like?
A Summit for bloggers
One of the great things about the Charlottesville area is the opportunity to connect with others in a variety of interesting and unique ways. Last year the inaugural blogging summit was held in Charlottesville – an unprecedented and unparalleled meeting of many of Virginia’s bloggers. Blogging has grown nation- and state-wide in the past year; the Charlottesville blogging arena has grown significantly, if not exponentially and has become a great source of opinions and information on what “is” Charlottesville. This year brings another summit – this time at the Darden School at UVa.Politics tend to populate much of the blogging world, and for good reason – politics elicit opinions and politics impact everybody in one way or another. Norm at OMT has a succinct summary of the evolution of this year’s summit. The lineup of speakers is truly impressive. Kudos to the organizers.Yet another thing to look forward to this summer.
Back from Chicago
I traveled to Chicago Monday afternoon and returned late last evening. The meeting was informative and enlightening with regards to the future of the real estate industry as a whole. More on this later. For now, back to blogging.
Morning links 08 May 2006
Behind the scenes on the NGIC deal – NGIC is one of the major driving forces of our local economy; this is a little bit of what it took to keep them here.Is buying a place far from the city worth it? Maybe not, with fuel prices continuing to skyrocket.Everybody has a little bit of voyeur in them. This article, Real-Estate Snoops Use Sites To Find Prices of Others’ Houses, identifies many of the methods online to satisfy your curiosity. Note that the data is most likely not 100% accurate for the Central VA region. See: RealestateABC.com and Zillow.com.Are you ready to buy a home? The WashPost has a quiz for you.An aggregation of Google mashups. In only Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville would offer their crime data in a usable format, we could do the same here.Has Charlottesville “Jumped the Shark?”
Gen X and Gen Y
Gen X and Gen Y already are and will for some time, impact the real estate market in an incredible manner. Not only are fuel and utility costs much higher in larger homes, but most simply don’t need the space – witness the dearth of formal dining rooms in many new homes. Condos are extremely attractive to young professionals due to their smaller, typically better quality space close to everything. Failing to recognize and acting on this emerging trend would be as dangerous as ignoring the baby boomer market.Reach Advisors, a market-research firm in Boston, would argue that the Drurys are not alone in their thinking, and that there is a disconnect between affluent “Generation X” home buyers and the home builders and land developers who are supposed to be catering to them.James Chung, president of Reach Advisors, said he believes there is a “generational shift,” with buyers ages 25 to 39 demanding features that are different from what their parents, the baby boomers, have sought. “Yet, most home builders are reluctant to change the formula that made them so profitable over the past 10 years,” Mr. Chung said. (Source: NYTimes)For more insight, I recommend this article from the NYTimes; Gen X and Gen Y have different needs and desires. If the market as a whole is not set to adapt, somebody will.To one extreme are Tiny Homes.