It’s funny how a seemingly small shift can have a big impact. For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Desk and I highly recommend it. I’d used the same blogging platform for nearly 8 years,…
Browsing Category Blogging
Crozet in 2013
The more I’ve thought about this, the more I hope to make time to got back and do a wrap up for 2012, 2011, 2010 …
If you’re interested in what happened in Crozet, I went through the 2013 archives and chose what I thought to be the best and most relevant stories in 2013 . I’m posting this for two reasons:
1 – I think it’s a useful story.
2 – It’s an example of why I continue to write on this and that blog; putting together this type of year end summary as efficiently as I did would be impossible on any other platform (Facebook, G+, Twitter, etc)
Thanks for Reading RealCentralVA in 2013 – and Hopefully 2014
Thank you. Thank you for reading this year. Your time, your insight – on and offline – is a huge part of why I do what I do here.
I’m planning some stories for 2014 – obviously a bunch of new stories but also quite a few that have never made it out of “draft†status in my moleskin or my writing program.
The wonderful thing about real estate – both as a career to practice and as something about which to write – is that every year is different and interesting. Having written well over 4,000 stories since January 2005 here (some of which are pretty good) there remains plenty to write.
Some of the things that are on my list for 2014 –
– Unemployment and its affect on the housing market
– New construction – more is coming – what will its impact be on infrastructure and the resale housing market?
– The impact of new mortgage rules – Qualified Residential Mortgages are finally being implemented, and while the rules haven’t yet been finalized (or written) this new wrinkle will affect the housing market.
– The new proposed legislation that affects real estate stuff
– I’ll continue to localize national real estate advice. This is a wonderfully useful overview of the home buying process, with at least one detail that doesn’t apply to the CharlAlbemarle area – when buying a home, you wire the money.
– What do you want to read about? What interests you?
And next-to-lastly, a request:
If you want to stay informed every time I write a story, I’m asking you to consider subscribing; you can do so here (it’s the second option).
If that’s too much email (and for me, it probably would be) – you can subscribe to my monthly note , which is where I write some of my best (and definitely my best-edited) stuff.
This is a Test – A Google Plus Test
As much as anything, I’m testing Google + embedding, but also prefacing an upcoming post preliminarily titled “The Troubling Transience of the Web”
(click through if you’re curious)
You Know You’ve Been Blogging for a Long Time When
You know you’ve been blogging for a long time when about a tenth of the links to which you’ve pointed over the past 8 years are now bad/broken ones. I installed the Broken Link Checker…
A Return to Basics – RealCentralVA’s monthly newsletter
I’m trying something new. I know that not everyone wants to read everything I write and post here (there’s always something happening in Charlottesville’s real estate market – direct and tangentially). So I’m introducing a monthly newsletter. My thoughts and rationale:
– I expect to write more stuff that’s from the heart, stuff that by design isn’t for world-wide consumption as well as insights about Charlottesville, our real estate market, and answering questions that might be misunderstood by someone just stumbling onto the blog … I expect (and hope) that the folks subscribing will have at least a passing familiarity with who I am.
– This coincides with my decision to return to taking notes with – get this – a pen and paper. (this was my inspiration) I wrote in moleskins for years and realized that I’ve been missing writing.
– I wanted to do a weekly or bi-monthly newsletter, but want to do something I can commit to. (clients come first, then my writing)
– Feel free to forward this newsletter to friends, if you find it valuable.
– I’m making a deliberate decision to not have online archives of what I write; if you want to read what I write, it’s really, really easy to subscribe. (they will be archived at RealCentralVA.com though, privately)
– This concept is a copy of Chris Brogan’s – he emails a weekly newsletter every Sunday; I’d like to think I can build up to that. But for now, I’ll just post a monthly reminder here about my newsletter.
– Feedback is welcome and appreciated. Email me anytime (particularly if you think I’m off base, need correcting or would like more information or a clarification).
With that preface, here’s where you sign up.
I’ll be emailing this out on Tuesday, 5 February.
Update: I’ve just finished the first draft, and I really like it and hope you find it valuable.
Update 2 – I noticed that TinyLetter lets me send the current newsletter to subscribers new since I originally sent it … for the short term (3-4 months) I’m going to send it to folks as they subscribe.
Many Years of Blogging
January 4, 2005 I posted my first not-so-great-post here on RealCentralVA. So very much has changed since then that I can’t begin to list the significant, insignificant and surprisingly significant shifts in the real estate writing space (I was one of the first and some days feels like I may be one of the last), changes in the (real estate) technology space (iPhone to name one) or my personal or professional life (another daughter, new company). But this remains the same today as it did in 2005:
One aspect of real estate that has not and never will change is that this business is about people.
People make the decisions about where to move. People decide in which school district they will reside, and people choose with whom they will work. My job, each and every day, is to meet people and earn their business and their trust.
Thank You:
– To those who have read me for years.
– To those who have worked with me because you found me here. To those who haven’t.
– To those who have found value here in the home buying or home selling process (even if you didn’t work with me 🙂 )
– To those who comment, email, connect or lurk.
Neither the goal nor the focus of what I do here really hasn’t changed – to provide honest, transparent, real analysis of the Charlottesville – Albemarle and surrounding areas’ real estate market, growth, politics, lifestyle and anything else that piques my interest.
Thanks for reading; here’s to another year.