Jan. 4, 2007 - Premature Blogulation |
Chalk this up the best laid plans of beagles and men ...
Here was the plan. For the past couple of days I have been working on relocating - not physically, but at least in blogging spirit. After considerable research I had decided the time had come to move my blog to my own server. I decided this with virtually no knowledge of the WordPress platform but, knowing I'm a somewhat bright individual, I thought this would be easy.
When I discovered it wasn't so easy, I decided to begin a countdown with a firm deadline. Without the deadline, I might never finish. With the deadline, come hell or high water, I was going to be making the move. Only two people outside of my wife (who gave me the same quizzical look she gives me during most football discussions) knew that this change was in the offing.
I wrote a quick post on my new blog, both as an introduction and to get a feel for the platform. I didn't ping the entry. I didn't do anything else with it. My blog wasn't ready.
Then the blog was discovered by both the boys at sellsius and by Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy.
And so now I am here ... opening the doors to the new blog at myblog.daltonsazhomes.com while I still have electricians running wire and plumbers making sure there's running water and inspectors checking the works. Keep in mind that this is a work in progress, but with enough effort I expect to have everything the way I almost want it by the weekend. And I say almost want it because I've discovered one of the side effects of blogging is a lack of satisfaction for the current state of anything electronic. There's always a better widget.
In any event, here's some information for the road ...
- To the folks at RealTown Blogs, you have my eternal thanks for providing this platform and getting me started down the path of owning a blog. It's impossible to believe this all has been only in the past year.
- Additional thanks to Lady Ardell, without whose prompting I never would have gotten this blog going in the first place. If only I could get her to stop SHOUTING at me in bold-faced type when I disagree with her.
- If you have this blog in your RSS Viewers (a la Google Reader, etc.), here is the new feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DaltonsArizonaHomesBlog
- If you are subscribing to this blog via e-mail, I'll be switching over your subscriptions. You also can do so with the form on the new blog. If you've been debating unsubscribing, this probably would be a good time to tell me before I enter your e-mail address into the new system.
- If I'm on your blogroll, please enter the new address: http://myblog.daltonsazhomes.com
- All of the posts here to date will remain here. I may pull over a couple of the more popular ones, but for the most part I will be beginning fresh.
In general we're going to be taking a couple of steps backward to move significantly forward, not only on the blog but on my Dalton's Arizona Homes website. I'm going from 63 linked blogs to zero. But there's no question the time has come to move on. At various times this blog has driven up to 13% of the traffic to RealTown Blogs. I'd like to see what we do on our own two feet.
The morale of this story? You really can teach a dog new tricks. Or what to do with a widget, even.
We'll see you on the other side, my friends.
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2007 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes
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Jan. 3, 2007 - Marketing Phoenix real estate |
If only this business were as easy at it looks on Million Dollar Listing. If you've ever watched the show, all the agents ever seem to have to do is throw open the front doors for an open house, have plenty of fancy snacks handy and wait for the offers to come rolling in. Needless to say, much as L.A. Law had little to do with the actual legal profession, these snippets from Bravo barely relate to the realities of marketing real estate.
Yesterday I promised my daughter I'd only work for an hour or so. That hour easily stretched to three hours. And I still have a website to complete for a peer, a newsletter to write and a dozen other minor tasks to complete. So what has taken so much time? Marketing, my friends. Marketing.
On Saturday I took a listing on 8552 W. Rue de Lamour in Peoria. Since that time I have entered the listing into MLS, ordered a virtual tour, added a listing to craigslist, ordered an e-mail flyer and added the property to my website and posted an entry about the home on Active Rain. That still leaves me to create the individual property page for the home, create a blog post here and send send Just Listed postcards. I left the flyers in the hands of my listing coordinator and am actively working to shift additional responsibilities in the future.
The cycle actually will repeat itself tomorrow when I enter another listing, this one a 3.3-acre horse property in Wittmann, into the MLS tomorrow morning. All of the above will be done once again. And again for the other 10 properties I currently have listed.
My goal is to be working with a Buyers Specialist by the end of this year, allowing me to focus on listings and relocation clients. There are some hurdles to overcome to get there, but once I'm there I'm confident the amount of work passing through at Dalton's Arizona Homes will be much higher than it is now.
In the interim, I did take two intelligent steps. First, I am using a listing coordinator to assist in getting my marketing rolling as soon as possible on these listings. When you offer a 45-day listing period on most homes, there is little time to lose.
And second, I am partnering with another agent in my office, Jaie Wiley, to handle rental and rent-to-own leads. These have been very consistent over the past two years and bringing in help is the best way of making sure all of them are handled expeditiously.
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes
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Jan. 2, 2007 - Fiesta Bowl follow-up |
For those who regard discussions of football akin to Spanish-language television, feel free to skip this one. (Let's say goodbye to my wife.) We are going to deviate from the real estate theme for a day and devolve into sportswriter mode following last night's Fiesta Bowl.
I had watched the first half and then slowly faded as the cold medicine kicked in. A late call awakened me and I started working on the computer, where I saw Boise State was holding on by eight. I made it back to the television seconds after Oklahoma scored the second of their two touchdowns 20-odd seconds apart. It turns out, I made it back just in time.
That Boise State came back to tie the game wasn't as remarkable as they way in which they did it. Finally, there was a football coach who realized that with a minute to go and two timeouts, low-percentage deep passes weren't necessary. Instead, succession of medium routes helped the Broncos move down the field. And that left them in position for the hook and lateral play which tied the game.
Usually the play is run with a pair of wide receivers in the same general vicinity, essentially both running hook routes, one deeper than the other. The deep receiver makes the catch and pitches to the short receiver, where he has to evade not only his own man but whomever was covering the deep receiver. This is what makes this so-called misdirection played rarely successful (unless you're the Miami Dolphins.) But Boise State added what turned out to be the perfect wrinkle - throwing the pass to a receiver just shy of the first-down marker (still hard to believe that part was intentional, then having him turn in to seemingly stretch for the first down.)
Except he didn't stretch. As he curled to his right, he pitched the ball to a second receiver running right to left for a lateral and a remarkable easy score. Oklahoma's defense converged on the original receiver to try and prevent the first down and never had a chance to adjust.
It only got better in overtime. Let's skip past the first few gadget plays, even including the touchdown where the a receiver took a direct snap and threw to a wide open tight end on the right side of the end zone as the quarterback ran in motion to the left. We'll just go straight to the two-point conversion - the only choice possible, given the ease with which Oklahoma had scored on Adrian Peterson's 25-yard dash to open overtime.
I've watched the replay two dozen times. I know what's coming. And I still don't see the ball sitting in the quarterback's left hand until just before he hands the ball to Ian Johnson for the winning two-point conversion. It's enough to make me want to have my eyes checked. I KNOW IT'S COMING AND I STILL CAN'T SEE IT.
Unbelievable doesn't begin to describe it. And for those of us in the Valley, we get to do things all over again in six days when Ohio State plays Florida in the BCS Championship Game. Maybe Boise State should hang around and we can try and arrange an OSU-BSU meeting over at Cactus High School next Tuesday.
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton\'s Arizona Homes
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Jan. 2, 2007 - Dues are Due |
Many people enter the real-estate industry because the requirements are light and the possible rewards seem great. "I want the license for my own deals" or "I'll just do some for friends and family, here and there" are the most common refrains. And from a distance, real estate seems like a tremendous risk-reward proposition: pay $300 - $400 to attend a certified real estate school, pass the licensing exam and activate your license for $100 and change and you're off and running.
Right?
Well, no.
I just completed paying my yearly dues to the Phoenix Association of Realtors. It's almost the stuff of MasterCard commercials:
National Association of Realtors Dues $ 94
Arizona Association of Realtors Dues $150
Phoenix Association of Realtors Dues $ 75
Opportunity to be bashed on real estate
bubble blogs from coast to coast PRICELESS
Membership in NAR locally isn't exactly required but if you want access to the local MLS you have to belong. You also have to pay a separate MLS dues fee later in the year.
Everywhere you turn in this profession, there is someone waiting with their hand out politely requesting another check. And so you wonder ... with the turn in the market last year and with the seemingly easy money of 2005 gone, how many part-time sometime real estate agents are going to reach into their wallets for another year's worth of dues? My hunch is we'll see the numbers decline this year ... not an unwelcome sight, not so much for the reduced competition but simply because of the level of competence (or lack thereof) being purged from the market.
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes
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Aug. 21, 2006 - Attention Real Estate Webmasters! |
Looking for a Google PR4 site with which you can trade reciprocal links?
Dalton's Arizona Homes has an active reciprocal link exchange.
Visit http://www.daltonsazhomes.com/templates/links.html and use the link submission form!
Please note: at this time we're only accepting links from real estate related sites.
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes |
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