This month’s note is going to be a fun one. I’m going to be talking about an ethical challenge I’ve been teasing for a few months (keyword: “hoodie”) , a brief update on what’s been happening in the Charlottesville real estate market, a “wish list” for GIS applications for real estate research, and a bit more insight into the results from last week’s post about what buyers look for in neighborhoods.

If you’re interested, I’m inviting you to subscribe to one email a month.

Some extra food for thought from Seth Godin is so simple yet so challenging for a lot of the folks with whom I share the real estate profession:

Agents and brokers of any kind, in fact. Anyone who thrives when people are in the dark is in ever more danger of working in the bright light of transparent information.

Pretending that you offer the lowest price on a commodity, for example, is a lot more difficult when anyone who cares about the price can easily look it up. Fighting to keep the content of your course a secret, to pick another example, isn’t sufficient when a similar course is available online. The minute real estate listings went online was the minute that it was no longer sufficient that a real estate broker merely had information about real estate listings…