Trends, changes and crap

Posted on March 28, 2006 by Jim Duncan

The Washington Post has a potentially excellent series on Emerging Trends, touching on many facets of the changing market.  From one of these articles:

“It’s not what the market will bear anymore,” said Walter Molony of the National Association of Realtors. “It’s a question of what is a fair price.”

Bloggers exempted from campaign laws.

Don’t clog up the blogosphere with your crap. As business blogging becomes more appealing due to the perceived potential return on investment, more are taking to this medium. This is not necessarily a good thing. Those putting “serially-posted advertisements” out there are doing a disservice to those who take time and ownership of what they write and also to themselves. Blog readers tend to be savvy enough to discern when someone is trying to sell them something. Let the market decide.

The Edge of Sprawl. Replace Loudoun with Albemarle. Expand from there.

Open Houses are pretty much, a waste of everybody’s time. But sometimes, they happen to bring that “one buyer” we’ve been looking for … never say never.

From Inman:

Once you find the home you want to buy, discuss making an offer on it with your Realtor. Making your offer contingent upon the sale of your current home is the most common method of doing this, and while this isn’t a popular method to use in a hot market, it is very common in normal and slower markets. The market is normal at the moment, and I recently negotiated one of these contingency offers for clients of mine.

Making offers contingent on the sale of one’s property used to be unheard of. Now, it is becoming more common – so much so that I now consider it a viable option in some cases.

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About Jim Duncan

A Charlottesville Realtor who tries to stay on the bleeding/cutting/functional edge of technology and real estate trends. I have been selling real estate for the past 10 years, lived in C'Ville for twenty+ and am married to one of few Charlottesville natives left.
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  • http://www.freeenterpriseforum.org Neil Williamson

    Your reference to the Edge of Sprawl article “replace Albemarle with Loudoun and go from there” is incorrect.

    While Loudoun County and Albemarle County share a number of attibutes, it is important to look at the demographic and geographic differences that make this comparison unfair. Much of this data is from Former Loudoun County Chariman Jim Burton’s presentation to the League of Women Voters and the Piedmont Environmental Council’s flyer that was distributed at the event.

    1. Economic Engines – The University of Virginia, State Farm and the UVA Research Park are not equal to AOL, UUNET and other major corporate campuses located in Loudoun and Western Fairfax.

    2. Government Spending – Depsite their best efforts the Albemarle County Budget pales in comparison to the Federal dollars spent out of offices in Washington DC

    3. Air Travel – CHO is a great airport (that I use!) but Dulles is an international hub

    4. Military spending – Even with 900 new jobs NGIC does not come close to the Pentagon (still the world’s largest office building)

    5. Demographics/fertility – 70% of Loudoun families have kids in the school system compared with 30% of Albemarle families. Loudoun has built 37 new schools since 1991.

    6. Rate of Growth – When I asked Jim Burton what is a “sustainable” growth rate he said between 2 -3% annually. Accoding to the PEC flyer Albemarle County has been running at roughly this rate for the last twenty five years.

    7. Size of Development Area – Roughly the easten half (50%)of Loudoun County is their designated growth area – Albemarle is 5%.

    Such unfair comparisons of Albemarle and Loudoun cloud the important issues that are Albemarle specific. I think less false comarisons and more discussions of how to make the development areas more attractive than the rural areas to prospective new residents would result in more positive actionable suggestions.

  • http://waldo.jaquith.org/ Waldo Jaquith

    Neil, what you state about Albemarle is true now, but may not be in a few years. Why would an AOL locate here without a sufficiently large population to provide the staff? Why would we have a larger airport without enough people to serve?

    As Albemarle grows, these sort of magnets will locate themselves here and, consequently, the designated growth areas will be expanded. It’s a bit silly to pretend that what is now so will always be so; the market will dictate that these things will change.