First, thank you for reading. I’ve learned more than I could have ever expected or hoped for. Thank you for your comments and emails over the years.

I’ve been a Realtor for just over eight years, a real estate broker for nearly a month, and have been writing this blog for five years. Without the blog, I wouldn’t still be in business.

A couple million page views, several hundred thousand visitors, I finally had to switch to a more robust hosting solution, and most importantly, I’m still a successful husband, father and Realtor. 2009 was a pretty good year.

For my readers and clients (and potential clients) – please contact me anytime with questions about the Charlottesville regional real estate market, story suggestions, tips,

I worked hard on last year’s “blog-iversary” post where I looked back at four years of blogging about the Charlottesville real estate market, so I won’t do the same this year.

Milestones in 2009:

There were quite a few more, but a sampling …

- The brokerage – We opened Nest Realty Group this year, and by all accounts we have been successful. Increased market share, implemented new tools and always placed the clients first. 2010 looks to be exciting.

- I finally earned my Virginia Broker’s license.

- I’m giving up my fight to eliminate single-agent dual agency. More on this later, but suffice it to say that the traditional real estate establishment has too much of a vested interest in this legacy. I and we at Nest will just continue doing what we think is right for our clients; “Dual Agency is not in the client’s best interest — it’s only in the agent’s best interest“.

Other thoughts:

- Blogging is work. (but the good kind – fun and rewarding)

- I’ve added a lot of tools to the blog over the years, and gladly talk about them to whomever asks. Heck, five years ago the only “tools” I knew about were reading, writing and how to publish. Tools don’t make you good at what you do – in my case, representing clients.

- My archives are getting full.

- I’m trying to stick with my roots – writing about the Charlottesville real estate market, growth, politics, etc.. I stray frequently, but appreciate readers’ persistence and patience with my tangents.

- I’ve enjoyed a good relationship with the Charlottesville press, whom I respect for doing their best and embracing new ways to communicate to their readers. Seeing them all reach out to their respective readers and views via Twitter, Facebook … and yes, in real life … has been encouraging.

I’m grateful for my readers, clients and friends. Unsolicited kind words such as this make what I do worthwhile:

Still one of my favorites, from 2007:

… I started investigating local real estate blogs because, given that I am old and anxious to call myself a homeowner, I should approach the market as an old, yet informed, future Donald Trump, should I not? This is how I arrived at Real Central Virginia, a real estate blog by local Realtor Jim Duncan who, not coincidentally, is quoted to distraction in all manner of local media. It should be no surprise that the vast majority of local Charlottesville blogs are insanely boring or stupid or both. Ditto local real estate blogs (or all real estate blogs for that matter). Which is why this one stands out as being none of the above: It’s both good looking and good reading. It makes good use of TV clips from YouTube, links to articles on the topic (“The Upside of a Down Market” on RealBlogging.com), and personal observations.

I’m going to continue to be involved in Realtor and real estate stuff. I’ve questioned being involved, but will remain so long as they’ll have me (and even when they don’t I’ll still express my opinion). I serve on the Charlottesville Realtor Association Board of Directors, a committee or workgroup here or there, just finished my fairly fruitless term on the Virginia Association of Realtors’ Public Policy Group, will be beginning service on a VAR Group tasked with evaluating Virginia’s Agency laws (because, since the early ’90’s “much has changed in real estate with the advent of new technologies, business practices and consumer expectations.”) and will continue to serve on National Association of Realtors Groups and Committees whenever I am asked. I serve to learn and give back.

My advice to those who are fretting about not having strong social media presences? Don’t worry. Start writing; but write for yourself and your brand, not someone else’s. I’ve said since the beginning that my focus is on owning the content I create; what benefit do you get from building someone else’s site?

Find my Google profile, my card.ly profile, my Twitter feed,

Sincerely, thank you for reading and spending your time here. I greatly and humbly appreciate your time.

Copyright RealCentralVA.com, LLC. If you like this post, please, visit RealCentralVA.comwhere this was originally posted.

Two lists came out in the past couple days showing the important and/or influential people in the real estate space – on Twitter at least.

The first to come out was produced by Stefan Swanepoel, and the second by Dustin Luther; the former seems to have ruffled some feathers of those in the RE.net who were left off the list (which is being revised).

If you’re looking to follow more (influential) people in the real estate space, spend a few moments perusing the lists and choose to follow some of the people there. Please, please, please don’t blindly “follow all” – Twitter, by my definition is about engaging quality rather than quantity.

I’m humbled to be on both lists, but wouldn’t have lost any sleep if I hadn’t made the respective cuts.

For Charlottesville people – stay tuned for the next Charlottesville Tweetup – this one at a distinctly unique new space!

If you’re inclined, follow me on Twitter.

Update: My two cents on the lists:

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It’s been a while since the Carnival has been to RealCentralVA, but it’s just as wide and varied as I remember. With nearly thirty entries to choose from, making a “top 5″ selection was a bit of a challenge, but I chose the following, in no particular order, for my readers – hoping they will learn something from what others have to offer.

The Relocation blog guides us to psychology rather than mere statistics: Looking for Housing’s Bottom? Check Your Psyche for These 3 Signs

Want to look stupid (and who doesn’t, really)?

Call a bottom in the housing market.

Nothing has humbled more people than trying to figure out when our great housing skid has come to an end: would-be homebuyers, beleagured real estate agents, those perennial optimists at the National Association of Realtors.

These would-be Nostradami roll out statistic after statistic in a vain attempt to identify housing’s floor. But the floor keeps sinking.

Dan Green presents my personal favorite – call it the Big Top article if you will – because it answers a simple question that an awful lot of buyers and sellers ask:

I’m Looking At My HUD-1 Settlement Statement: What Is A Closing Cost and What Is A Prepaid Item?

Signing mortgage paperwork can be unsettling for people. No matter how many times a person has signed a HUD-1 Settlement Statement in their lifetime, there’s something about that form that mentally makes them drop on the deck and flop like a fish.

Settlement statements are confusing, no bones about it. And for good reason:

* The HUD-1 is cryptic. It doesn’t come with line-by-line instructions like an IRS form
* The HUD-1 bares no little resemblance to its “preview” — the Good Faith Estimate
* Most people never see HUD-1 Settlement Statements but for their own closing(s)

However, the settlement statement section that repeatedly confuses homeowners the most is the one known as “Prepaid Items”. A “prepaid item” is exactly what its name implies — a payment related to the mortgage, collected before the payment’s actual due date.

There are 10 types of prepaid items, listed in Sections 900 and 1000 of the settlement statement. The most common ones are:

Frugal Real Estate shows us how to Stage Your Way to a Successful Sale:

Home staging is becoming an increasingly common selling tactic in real estate. Home staging is often considered to be strategic decorating. However, home staging differs from decorating because the home owner’s personal taste is omitted. The décor choices are made to appeal to real estate buyers, not the current homeowners.

If carried out properly, staging your home can result in multiple offers and ultimately drive up your home’s selling price. If your home is currently on the real estate market or you are considering selling your home, here are some tips to guide you through the home staging process.

Landlord Schmandlord speaks to the tenants (but could be giving advice to anyone, really) with this post, For the Tenants: How to Deal with Noisy Neighbors:

You’re living in a nice apartment, but you have really noisy neighbors. You have been trying to deal with it, but you’re at the point where you feel you cannot put up with it any longer. What do you do?

And lastly, but certainly not least, Justin Britt’s Creative Link Building, Real Estate 101, because his tips on Creative Link Building are as useful for building traffic as they are for getting involved in your community – you know – In Real Life.

Thanks to all the entrants, thanks to those stopping by, and look to Hotpads for next week’s Carnival of Real Estate.

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(photo courtesy)

Seriously.

Every email, instant message, phone call, text … basically any conversation that comes about because of this blog is considered by me – the owner and operator – to be confidential. The range of questions that I receive is broad and varied, ranging from home inspection process questions to questions about specific neighborhoods to “how much should I offer …” to questions about agency – and dual agency.

Frequently, I will ask permission to post about the questions – if one person is curious about something, it’s likely others are curious as well.

Anytime – use the Contact page or the “Contact Me” widget in the sidebar.

Please – ask away; I love helping to educate people and I’m always looking for story ideas.

As such, I’ve updated the footer of the blog with a privacy policy and terms of use.

However, I am very careful to not infringe on any existing agency relationships.

Copyright RealCentralVA.com, LLC. If you like this post, please, visit RealCentralVA.comwhere this was originally posted.

Just curious -

If Realtor.com is displaying sold data (data apparently not available in Charlottesville – yet, bolding mine)

With some areas experiencing a 25 to 39 percent decrease in home prices in the third quarter, buyers need to remain competitive in potential bidding wars. Using REALTOR.com®, the #1 homes for sale Web site, buyers can track price changes on homes of interest, monitor actual sales data on nearby homes within 24 hours of a sale, and get the latest photos and video tours of thousands of Southern California properties.

Why can I not display the exact same sold and under contract data. Per my the Charlottesville Area MLS (rules of which I assume are common throughout the country):

Display of expired, withdrawn, contingent, sold, and pending listings is prohibited.

I’m working on finding out more about the rules and regs, but if this holds true, how can Realtor.com not be seen as a competitor of any Realtor aspiring to have a strong web presence? (Like this)

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An interesting higher-level editorial piece in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, while not written with the real estate industry in mind, has some clear parallels -

Marketing 3.0 is now the science of devising and managing directed business memes: call them bemes. Bemes are sent by members of social communities to each other and typically contain a reward or exclusive offer, which, when redeemed, also results in a reward coupon for the sender.

Here’s the thing – more now than ever before, the brand that matters most to the real estate consumer is the value added by the individual Realtor, not the brand. (and I’ll bet I could back this up with statistics if I had the resources to pull off a survey)

Of particular note regarding the current fragmentation of the real estate listings universe – (bolding mine)

From silos to simultaneity. Too many retailers today persist in believing that online shopping is merely a virtual extension of real world shopping. That is a big mistake.

Rather, online and offline need to coexist, and we need to rethink how they relate. For example, to their surprise, companies like BestBuy (which even encourages customers to shop the aisles but buy online from in-store kiosks) and Macy’s are discovering that physical retailing is a perfect way to move units online. That is, the physical world has become the showroom for the virtual realm.

Retailers now must reimagine a world where consumers experience products in stores but ultimately buy them on the Web: Stores are for experiences, the network is for inventories. And what in turn prepares potential customers for what to look for in stores? Online communities.

All of this suggests that Marketing 3.0 is not only different from its predecessors, but actively undermines them. If your marketing program fails to adapt to this new world, it won’t just become irrelevant — it will actually work against you.

There are very few big brokerages* in the real estate world who are embracing this “new” media (hint: it’s not new anymore).

The way forward is relatively clear – but will/can the big box brokerages adapt before they become dinosaurs, much like the Big Three automakers hopefully will?

If you’re a broker, big or small, read this at Chris Brogan’s site -

Today, we wonder how newspapers survive. Today, we wonder how the music industry will survive. Today, we wonder how GM and Ford and the rest of the US auto industry will survive. We worry about a lot of larger scale creations.

…

Tomorrow (and I mean the day after you read this), we already are equipped with the most robust and least expensive toolset for communications that the world has ever seen. We possess massive distribution networks for free. We are all Gutenberg. We are all Murdock. We are all available and ready.

Read more about silos and how the concept relates to MLS’ at Michael Wurzer’s FlexMLS blog, where he says, “NAR could create a non-profit that could be the ICANN for property IDs, and that would be valuable for tying together the efforts of those publishing real estate info on the web. Trying to cram everything into one silo is never going to happen.” (bolding mine)

*Better Homes and Gardens excepted

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Finally. After watching my friends Jay in Phoenix and Kris in San Diego do such wonderful things with their MLS search tools, I’m finally able to announce what I believe to be the single best tool to search for homes in the Charlottesville, Virginia area* -

Since founding RealCentralVA in 2005, I have never put a “Search for Homes” feature on my blog because none of the ones available had what I wanted; the technology is finally here thanks to Diverse Solutions. Also, I haven’t wanted to put “a” search solution here as I want it to add value to readers, rather than detract from the content and goals of the site. This tool, which you can use here, fulfills what I’ve been looking for.

A few of the features -

- Get alerts sent to you via Email or RSS

- Search by multiple School Districts – (eventually you should be able to search by more than one school district – I’m working on this)

- Search by Price Drops - ex: 10% in the past 10 days – and indication an property may finally be priced right

- Search by Foreclosure/Pre-Foreclosure status (still testing this one for its validity)

- Save your searches!

- Add notes to properties you’re watching.

One thing I’m already wanting to have changed (and there are likely more waiting to be found) – increase the number of results that display. I want more.

There are likely a few nuggets here and there that you’ll find useful and interesting.

With this tool, you are able to search almost the entire Charlottesville MLS – and as much as you’ll get anywhere else in the Charlottesville area – there are a few brokerages who choose not to display their listings in what is called an IDX feed – (more on this later)*.

One additional note – for the time being, I am going to keep registration off, meaning that you are free to search as much as you want (although I reserve the right to experiment from time to time). However – in order to save searches, get alerts delivered to you via RSS or email, you do need to give me some information (how else would the email gnome find you?) I’ll never spam you anyway. Promise.

Give it a spin by searching for Charlottesville homes here

Eventually, I’ll have a search widget in the sidebar of RealCentralVA, a search page and widget just for Crozet at RealCrozetVA, and hopefully one day soon at RealWaynesboroVA.

Be nice – I rushed to get it up today because I couldn’t wait any longer.

Please, please, please let me know what you think – I’ll make the changes as quickly as possible. It’s evolving and I’m happy to finally have somewhere to start.

* Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Nelson -

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And I’m so thankful that this is my last scheduled trip of the year. It’s been a busy year.

That said, I’ll be sitting on a panel of my peers – Ginger Wilcox, Teresa Boardman, Ines Hededus-Garcia whom I greatly respect where we’ll be discussing – you guessed it – real estate blogs and how Realtors can benefit from them. My goal whenever I speak is to provide an accurate and honest interpretation of how much work I believe it takes to write a successful real estate blog.

Friday I’ll be attending part of Bloodhound Unchained – where I hope to bring back at least three nuggets/tools/things which I can apply to my business – and therefore – my clients.

And then home for the foreseeable future, no conferences or trip planned (yet).

More at Ines‘, Dustin’s and Agent Genius.

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Agent Genius, the national real estate news magazine, launched two new features/branches this morning – AG Sphere and AG News – If you’re a consumer curious about what some of the best and brightest real estate minds have to say, or if you’re in real estate and want to learn about real estate trends, technology, mortgage news, even finding a local real estate professional and general movements within the industry, check them out.

*Disclaimer: I am honored to be one of the writers at AG, but that doesn’t influence how impressed I am by what they continue to do.

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Specifically regarding this post on Roost’s calling out the listing aggregators -

Roost’s conclusion? That using these sites “homebuyers waste tons of time searching through homes that aren’t actually for sale.”

Inman – Same Day

Trulia – Same Day

Zillow – Same Day

It is interesting that Century 21’s response was provided by an agent, Sotheby’s may not have been aware of Roost’s ad, and I’d bet that Google doesn’t care to respond.

For consumers in the Charlottesville area, Roost is a search front end that pulls listing information from the MLS; for the Charlottesville area, they have 29 listings; Waynesboro has one listing – far less than the local MLS. For better or worse, the MLS (and therefore Roost) is likely to have better and more comprehensive results than the aggregators.

The question is – why don’t the “big boys” have social media directors joining the conversation rather than ignoring it either deliberately or because of ignorance?

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Most of them are fed into CvilleBlogs, but the volume there is tremendous and hard to keep up with. We’re truly lucky to have such a vibrant, knowledge and diverse (blogging) community.

I found this blog, titled Discovering Urbanism, last week with this genesis, which shares a lot of my interests which focus on Charlottesville’s real estate and real estate market (location, location, location and “how do I get around?):

I started this blog about a year ago as a semi-public way for me to hash out my personal thoughts about urban form and community. An intellectual journal of sorts, available for others to correct and hopefully fine-tune. But before long I realized that the most interesting posts, as well as the ones that generated the most discussion, were those based in my particular city of Missoula. I discovered what should have been obvious all along: issues like transportation and zoning are pretty boring unless they are about the particular roads and lands that real people use. That’s where the action is. (ed note: bolding mine)

Thankfully the author has moved to Charlottesville and is documenting the Downtown Mall, Bike Maps, and much more.

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A confession – I procrastinate for things that aren’t related to my clients.

In 27 days in Las Vegas, the first RE Blog World convenes as part of the larger Blog World, and it’s not just about real estate blogging. The title of the session I’m giving is Getting Traditional Media Exposure with New Media Tactics, something that Real Cville noted in this interview (the comments speak volumes about the value of candor, transparency and engagement).

You seem to be the media go-to guy in C’ville. How did this happen?

Luck, timing and I’d like to think that the media and readers find value in my expertise and candid analysis of the market. I answer calls from the media and give honest answers, and thank them when they call me. I respect the work that they do and in turn like to think that they respect what I have to offer. All media are seeking content and expertise; I try to offer both. I’m actually talking about this next month at RE Blog World in Las Vegas [BB: Are Bubble Bloggers invited?]. I think that my candor is part of what they (and my clients) seek.

If you’re a Realtor in this challenging market, now is the time to invest in yourself and your business; learning tactics, strategies and tips – real, applicable knowledge such as that found at this event – is a huge step in that direction. Ginger Wilcox asks – Are you hearing the buzz? Do you want to see the biggest, baddest bloggers in the country?

Get your tickets here, and look at the speakers for the Blog World Expo – if you can’t learn from those folks, you’re just not paying attention.

How does this help my readers who aren’t Realtors or real estate professionals? Hopefully it demonstrates that I am a Realtor focused on improving how I serve, represent and communicate with my clients and potential clients. As I’ve never placed much value in the alphabet soup of Realtor designations, but on the actual knowledge gained, I recognize tremendous value in learning from some of the most successful real estate bloggers, leaders and visionaries in the country – this event is representative of those values.
Be impulsive – today’s the last day to register for $350!

Look at the lineup -

Dan Green

Daniel Rothamel

David Smith

Rich Jacobson

Dustin Luther

Jason Berman

Jeff Turner

Kelley Koehler

Mariana Wagner

Matt Faglioli

Michael Price

Mike Mueller

Morgan Brown

Teresa Boardman

Todd Carpenter

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Reciprocity; ain’t it grand? For those who may question my not-hating-the-bubble-bloggers’ mentality, it’s because they actually value good Realtors, and offer constructive (and blunt/brash) criticism – something that is often missing.

We’re the Bubble Blog, yes, but we’re not anti-Realtor. We’re anti-Bubble. There’s a vital need for expert realtors (we’ve said this before here, and on other blogs), especially in this rapidly-changing, complicated market and economy. A good realtor, in our humble opinion, is someone who takes into consideration not just the profit aspects of helping people to buy or sell what is typically the largest purchase of their lives, but also someone who knows that owning a house conveys with it other elements: a sense of community, a sense of responsibility, a sense of security, and that in the current market, and for several years to come, these intangibles may be more important than large profits.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview I did with them.

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This article was in the Washington Post the other day discussing how consumers are using social media to find Realtors, and was picked up by the Consumerist this morning who ask the question – “Would You Judge A Real Estate Broker By His Blog?”. Much of the content in these articles is old-hat to many readers of this blog, but two things jumped out at me -

1 – This comment at the Consumerist -

While I can’t say a blog would lead me to use someone as my broker, I have definitely already excluded two based on their (awful) writings!

Sorry, but if you can’t spell correctly, or even express your thoughts clearly, I don’t want you fighting for my largest investment.

2 – This statement in the WP article about Redfin, which if true is egregious (bolding mine)-

But Redfin has its drawbacks. Many buyers want additional help identifying properties. Also, if Redfin judges a prospective buyer’s offer to be too low — generally below about 85 percent of the asking price — the agent won’t present it to the seller.

If you’re a Realtor, carefully consider what you write.

If you’re a consumer – buyer/seller/voyeur – what do you look for in a real estate blog? Are you as put off as I am by Realtors who keyword slam their posts in an attempt to generate traffic based their use of the words Charlottesville (or any other market) real estate and Charlottesville homes?

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The MLS of the Future, courtesy of Saul Klein. The response has been underwhelming according to Technorati.

Much of his paper sounds like he read summaries of the NAR’s MLS PAG that lasted about 18 months, specifically his “takeaway terms.”

Authoritative and trusted source

Mission

MLS 5.0

Online communities

Parcel based

Property Wiki

Single Point of Entry

Single Sign-On

Social Networking

Strong (two party) Authentication

Syndication

Vision

Web 2.0

I’m still working through what I think about his proposal, but I remain wary of the NAR attempting anything this important and/or of this scale. Their stellar mismanagement of Realtor.com doesn’t give me warm, fuzzy feelings about their prospects of success.

Greg and Tom have more.

Update 8/19/2008 – Danilo at Agent Genius and the Notorious R.O.B. does as well (including a comment from Saul that he’s not working with NAR)

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And their names are Jane Doe, John Doe, and Snarky Doe.

cVillains and I must have been drinking the same Kool Aid, as we both have interviews with the Real C’Ville bubble bloggers … If you haven’t read the Charlottesville Bubble Blog, you’re missing out. They can be brash and snarky at times, but their anonymity gives them freedom and license to write about subjects I can’t touch on this blog. In addition, their critical analysis has proven to be insightful, and their commenters frequently give “on the ground” opinion. As far as I can tell, their audience is comprised of buyers, sellers, voyeurs, Realtors and others with and without sticks in the real estate fire.

I am thankful for their time and responses to my questions. Some (Realtors) may question my reaching out to the Bubble Bloggers, as they have occasionally targeted fellow Realtors. True, but the commentary they provide is valuable and fills a void in the real estate discussion in Charlottesville.

One of my goals is to encourage all of my clients and readers to educate themselves as much as possible; there are a few real estate blogs in the Charlottesville area – this is one that should be considered, if only for their candor and “contrary” point of view. This point of view is crucial; groupthink is dangerous, and Real C’Ville provides thoughtful, intelligent commentary, as they prove with their responses below. If nothing else, they help to keep us accountable and on our toes. * ….

How many of you are there?

There are two and a half of us. Two write most of the material; the other one synthesizes newspaper articles and other blog posts, and does the layout and posting work. She actually is a regular contributor to a couple of blogs, regional and NYC, with a real identity. She keeps trying to leave us on our own, but then some article will break or she’ll get interested in a property and stay on.

What was your inspiration for the blog?

There was a particular house that came on the market in the Winter that a bunch of folk in our circle of friends thought was ridiculously overpriced. Nationwide, prices were dropping, but here was this place 20% higher than last year’s version. And when we tromped through the open house, none of us could believe it. Someone commented that it would be an “outsider” who’d pay that kind of coin—and in fact, it was a couple from the Northeast, come here to work in Finance, who bought the place 90-120 days after listing. That house never appeared on the blog, but it inspired conversations, and motivated watching CAAR, Craigslist, the printed materials, and neighborhood signs more closely. We’d already been reading bubble blogs, and were of course inspired by these. There are some bubble blogs that are national, some that are regional, and some that are local, focusing on properties, and we’ve linked to them on Real C’ville.

Do you intend to have the vitriol that has become commonplace on Housing Panic and the Housing Bubble Blog?

We don’t intend the vitriol on those blogs—which we actually admire (the blogs as well as the vitriol). We like passion. Some of our commenters tend to wax more vitriolic than we do. Because the other blogs are so impassioned, we can remain a touch more balanced. Which, anyway, probably goes over better around here (know your audience, etc.). A lot of the vitriol is aimed at those who are considered greedy, and those who could have prevented the “credit crisis” from getting as bad as it has. This is more than deserved, in our humble opinion. This economy will weaken the finances of the majority of citizens, individually, for years to come. And to the rest of the world, we look like piggish idiots. It’s not good politically, among other things.

Do you rent or own?

This is an important question, because it gives insight to whether or not the blog is just a bitter rant from people locked out of the market, or more balanced in its presentation.

Of the two primary bubblers, one of us owns, the other one rents. The renter rents from the owner. The part-time galpal, we’re unsure of. She’s something of a mystery. She’s working on her laptop all the time, it seems—blogging. But what else is she doing? She doesn’t go to an office. She always has plenty of money, nice car, accouterments. She rents a big house in town. We think there’s a trust fund somewhere, but she won’t be pinned down. Of the other two, the one who rents has far more money than the one who owns. The one who rents may own in a year or two, presumably, when prices seem like they won’t decline. But right now this one, the renter—says he’d feel “rooked” if he bought a house. As if it were made of clouds or were just an illusion. He uses the word “rooked” all the time. He pays off his credit cards every month, and he’s an online rate-chaser (moving savings deposits from one bank to another, for best rates, more popular when the Fed was higher and banks were paying more).

Probably other people have made the following observation, but it says a lot about the housing market here and nationwide. His contention is that when mortgages were “free” or “cheap” –requiring no down payment, and low payments for a period of years before resetting–a lot of people were able to disconnect the house from the actual price. If you could get a $400K house for $1200 a month for the first three years, something with a big yard, 3 bedrooms, etc., it seems like a deal, especially if it were to “appreciate” 15-30% the next year and the next. You’d make a profit with very little outlay (due to “leverage”) when you wanted to sell. But if you were to buy a 1600 sq ft house now for $399K and actually parted with $80+K as a down payment, plus all sorts of costs and fees, totaling let’s say perhaps $100K, you’d still be paying (at 6.8%) nearly Two Grand a month. For 30 years.

So you’d been wiped out of a big chunk of change, and you still had large monthlies, plus property taxes, maintenance, whatever touch-ups or renovations you wanted to do, need for new furniture or appliances, etc. Ouch. People used to wait and sacrifice to make what was typically the biggest and most important purchase of their lives for this very reason. But during the Bubble, a house purchase turned into more or less the equivalent of buying a car. (And we all know how Americans at every income level love buying much fancier cars than they should).

Ed Note: I decided to break this up into two parts. Part 2 will be published next Monday.

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With a heavy heart and a great deal of sadness, RealCentralVA will be closed from Friday in honor and memory of Sheila Lublin, wife of Bill Lublin, a friend and fellow author at the Agent Genius blog.

As Jay so eloquently stated:

Some of us are chipping in money to help Bill and his son get through the next few days by setting up food deliveries from local Philadelphia area restaurants/deli’s. If you’d like to contribute, you can click on the donation widget in the right side bar. Excess donations will be sent to the American Cancer Society.

Update 08 August 2008: Wow. The community blew by the $1500 goal. From AG: “Any additional funds beyond $1500 will go directly to the Sheila L. Lublin Memorial Fund, c/o Lupus Foundation of America-Phila. Tri-State Chapter, 25 Washington Lane, Suite 39-1, Wyncote PA 19095. (Sheila suffered from Lupus herself)”

I cannot fathom what Bill and his family are going through, but hopefully the community support through the meals and donations will do a little to help ease the pain the next few weeks.

There is more this world than blogging, but the connection felt among the real estate bloggers is very real, as is the collective sadness and desire to help. The support that Bill’s blogging family is putting out is overwhelmingly gratifying.

Regarding our own families and friends – every day matters.

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Fines for grammatical and spelling errors, for not uploading photos, using the words “cute, gorgeous … honey stop the car” …. I’ll vote for Kevin Boer in a heartbeat (of course, I don’t have a vote that I know of).

Seriously. Why not? One more thing to talk about in September at Real Estate Blog Word in Vegas.

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Thank you. Plain and simple.

You make this blog so much better, and I am grateful for the time the time, energy, thought and insight you provide here. The knowledge I gain from your comments istremendous, and I sincerely appreciate every one of you.

(photo courtesy)

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Next week I will be sitting on a panel Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008.

I actually have to work next week as well (there’s more to the real estate life than blogging and conferences), so I will unfortunately be missing Beer with Bloggers and RE BarCamp.

The panel on which I’ll be sitting is one that, to me is fascinating and intriguing, particularly in today’s market where there is an ongoing seismic shift away from Realtors’ core competencies being “searching for/finding homes” to “representation of clients’ best interests.” There is a lot to discuss and I expect that forty-five minutes won’t be nearly enough time.

This should be interesting.

Thursday, July 24, 3:00 pm – 3:45 pm

Changing Roles: Brokers & the MLS vs. the Listing Aggregators

Panelists:

Ben Phillips, Vice President & New Product Development, Managing Director, Realogy Franchise Group

Beverly Faull, GM & SVP, Fidelity National Information Services

Celeste Starchild, Vice President Broker Sales, ListHub: Broker Division of Threewide’s Broker Division

Jim Duncan, Realtor/Blogger, RealCentralVa.com

Sean Black, VP of Sales, Trulia

This is the third time I have been invited to speak at Inman Connect, and every time I learn something new.

- In San Francisco 2007 I spoke about the benefits of local blogging

- Earlier this year in New York City I was on a panel titled, “Blogging, a Fresh Take on Client Prospecting“

* I despise writing stories with “I” as one of the core elements, but writing this post in the third person would have been a bit odd (and perhaps arrogant sounding)

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