Browsing Category sideblog

Too many agents – for how long?

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It’s odd to be quoted in the same article as industry leaders such as David Charron and Stefan Swanepoel, but here’s mine:Jim Duncan, a Realtor for Century 21 Manley in Charlottesville, Va., and a member of the board of directors for the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors, said the “80-20 rule” — that 20 percent of the folks in the industry do 80 percent of the business — seems to hold true in real estate, and he expects to see a lot of agents leaving….  “If you do two transactions a year you’re not serving your clients.”The newest agents and the oldest ones seem to be the most likely to leave the business, he said, while “some may choose to keep a license for that odd referral.”  From today’s Inman article predicting that the number of Realtors will drop this year: (subscription required after today)The trade group’s membership grew 89.6 percent during the latest spurt, from 716,078 members in 1997 to 1.36 million Realtors in 2006.  But real estate is a cyclical business, and the housing market is slumping.It has happened before — Realtor membership, like home homes sales and prices, tends to ebb and flow with economic cycles but has generally risen over time.NAR projects that membership will drop 4.3 percent this year, to 1.3 million, and fall another 10 percent from that level to 1.17 million in 2008.

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Charlottesville is the #2 place to retire young

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So says CNN and BestPlaces.net.Specific criteria used in making up the list of best places follow: * Population growth: We wanted positive growth since 1990….  * Economic health: current unemployment rate below 4 percent and job growth greater than 10 percent for the past five years.  * College presence: one or more major and/or highly competitive college in the vicinity.  * Recreation and arts and culture score in the top third for nearby major metropolitan areas.This is a good place to start if you are looking for homes in the Charlottesville area.(Take that, Jeremy!

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The little things matter

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Light blogging ahead as typing with a broken pinky is might painful.If only I could email my doctor and ask for an X-ray and go from there.  Interesting read at the WSJ about the health-care industry (permanent link) (and real estate is targeted as being anti-competive?)Our public-school system and our health-care system may seem as different as night and day.  Yet both systems share something in common: Mediocrity is the rule and excellence, where it exists, is distributed randomly….Sometime in the early 20th century, lawyers, accountants and most other professionals discovered that the telephone was a useful instrument for communicating with clients….  Sometime in the late 20th century most other professionals discovered email.

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