The main change is this text on the Residential Property Disclaimer Statement (PDF) (and the Disclosure as well, but those are rarely used in the Commonwealth of Virginia).The undersigned owner(s) represent that there are no pending enforcement actions pursuant to the Uniform Statewide Building Code (§36-97 et seq.) that affect the safe, decent, and sanitary living conditions of the real property described above of which the owner has been notified in writing by the locality or any pending violation of the local zoning ordinance which the violator has not abated or remedied under the zoning ordinance, within a time period set out in the written notice of violation from the locality or established by a court of competent jurisdiction, except as disclosed.The full bill is here, and even better, Richmond Sunlight highlights the changes. If you are buying or selling real estate in Virginia, you do have a choice as to which form – Disclosure or Disclaimer – that you may choose.Note: another set of Disclosures/Disclaimers will be arriving 1 January 2008.
Date Archives July 2007
eNeighborhoods MLS Alliance – pros and cons?
Note: This is a post directed primarily at other Realtors and those who work with Realtors’ data.All the rage nowadays seems to be regionalization of MLS’.They work with Google Maps.eNeighborhoods has an MLS data sharing service called MLSAllianceâ„¢ that links together different MLS services, so that real estate professionals are able to make one search for properties and retrieve results from multiple MLS systems…. Google Maps for Enterprise will soon be added to MLSAlliance sites in California, Ohio, and Florida, giving real estate professionals in these markets access to all listings, with an equal amount of comprehensive data for each of those listings.I’ve read about them at CallClareity…. It minimizes the turf wars that seem to always be percolating between regions by not forcing data standards on various MLS.Some questions I have:- Do member Realtors have access to, and rights to use, all data – solds, withdrawns, expired, actives, Days on Market, etc.?- Partnering with a “for-profit†third-party such as eNeighborhoods smacks of the Move.com/Realtor.com alliance/fiasco, which is widely derided by Realtors as a frustrating failure – both for the Realtors providing the data and the consumers seeking information.- What control over the data display do Realtors have?… I haven’t found out yet if what they approved is the only the Realtor-side or not, but if they approved everything, I would be both shocked and hopeful that something productive could be done.** I was a member of the MLS NAR PAG, so am constrained by the NDA we signed.
Using mobile phones to track … pretty much everything
Courtesy of the BBC, and thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones:Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are using data from mobile-phone networks to create real time maps of people moving around the city….”This is really the first time that you can take an urban system, like a big city, and try to see in real time how it lives, how people move and what’s happening in (Rome),” says Carlo Ratti from MIT.”In the city for example you’ve got taxis with GPS, you’ve got buses with GPS, and also you’ve got mobile phones.”If you take that information and you apply artificial intelligence and algorithms to it, then you can understand very interesting things about the urban system,” he says.What’s it all mean? One result could be -Better route planning for buses and cars could mean less time standing in traffic, pumping out noxious fumes.Fascinating stuff. From Charlottesville’s perspective, analyzing traffic patterns could very well lead to smarter transportation methods. Shoot, if they’d just quit stopping the bus for five minutes on Route 29 during rush hour, that would be a success.Via TechCrunch.And a funny story (via VC) at Wired regarding hyperlocal and mobiles.
Tracking real estate stocks – Google Finance Style
Only two of these national homebuilders have presence in the Greater Charlottesville real estate market, Ryan Homes (NVR) and K Hovavian (HOV), while Toll (TOL) have been rumored to be poised to make a move in the near future.Everyone knows that business cycles oscillate from boom to bust every so many years, and real estate is not unique in this regard…. It’s not just a matter of saying “real estate stocks are down” — it’s more that they’re down, in a roughly correlated manner, over a meaningful common time period.Since 31 December, 2004:Since 2003:What’s next?… More on this in next week’s post about the first year’s market stats.We all know that what goes up must come down; will that which goes down come back up? I suspect so.For an even more interesting graphical display, as well as a cogent analysis, this time one of the subprime market, check out Fortius One’s “Exploring a Slice of Subprime Space” post.
“Public” private property
Interesting story via Boing Boing about the privatization of Silver Spring, Maryland’s downtown area. Note the parallels to some of the conversations we have had in Charlottesville along similar veins.But Elrich says Peterson insists on treating downtown Silver Spring as if it were an indoor mall. They set and enforce rules that would never pass legal muster on a public street…. And photographers such as Py are regularly stopped and told to move along.Privatizing the Downtown MallCharges against Rich Collins droppedWho will pay the property taxes?
Google 411 gets better
1-800-GOOG-411 has saved me a few times, and if I didn’t have a GPS in my car, I would find this even more useful -Today, your GOOG-411 experience just got better: during your call to GOOG-411, just say “map it”, and you’ll get a text message with the details of your search plus a link to a map of your results right on your mobile phone.Having the information texted to my phone was mighty useful. This is even better.We may never need to implant RFID chips into our shoulders. Google will already know where we are and where we’ve been and probably predict where we’re going next (before we know ourselves).
OpenHouse.com – what a waste
Give users the option to receive either an email saying there’s an open house in their area or an RSS feed?Heck, the first time I heard about OpenHouse.com (and I’m a Century 21 [Realogy] agent) was from Joel’s site.From their press release:”In a competitive market, brokerage firms need to take every measure to maximize service levels to their clients while leveraging the internet as a tool to increase business potential,” said Phillips. “Our site is a perfect complement to a high-tech, high-touch approach to providing comprehensive real estate services.”They have an odd definition of “perfect.” However if not showing all the open houses out there and not communicating to their franchises that this tool exists is perfect, they’ve nailed it.What’s needed?… Seriously, take a hint from those Google guys – they incorporate all of the information, and it seems to have worked for them.