Browsing Category Trends

Where Are the Walkable Neighborhoods in Charlottesville/Albemarle?

A new tool, optimalhomelocation.com (h/t Lifehacker ) Here’s my very rudimentary definition, based on personal biases and listening to my clients’ wants and needs – – Schools –(you can search by elementary school on my Charlottesville Home Search ) – Walkable neighborhood with sidewalks –(Walkscore can help, but you’re better off asking someone or driving by the area – or better yet, we can ride to the properties on bicycles!) … — The County of Albemarle does not offer curbside recycling, but two private companies have recently sprung up to fill this need – My Recycling Club and Green Pieces Recycling , so if you’re in the Urban Ring of the County, you should be able to get recycling.

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Charlottesville Builders – Local is Good (and Bad)

This isn’t an ode to Church Hill (but they are the largest local ones to go so far, so naturally they are on the top of everyone’s minds) or any other builder – but a focus on the benefits of ” local .” … For many years, Charlottesville has been an area that offered many home and community choices in the form of many small to medium privately owned home builders and developers.

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A New Question for Sellers to Ask When Interviewing Listing Agents in Charlottesville

Meaning, will you be marketing my property not just in the Charlottesville are MLS (to other Realtors) and on the local Realtors’ Association site, as well as Realtor.com but – on every other Realtors’ site who has an IDX feed ( such as the one found here )- therefore substantially increasing traffic and exposure to my property? … There’s a lot happening the the acronym world about which we need to learn (NAR/DOJ/VOW/MLS/IDX/etc)

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A word on Trulia’s new features

Trulia announced their “Featured Listings” product the other day to much fanfare within the RE.net.  There’s little to add to the discussion but my personal experience beta testing the product.  All I have to offer are the stats provided by Trulia on my listings (click the images for higher-res) – 1 – The increase in views for my listings is impressive….  While similar to Realtor.com’s differentiation of listings, Trulia’s mission is clearly different – they are out to make a profit.

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Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2008

If you’re interested in what’s around the bend in the real estate world, have a look at Gerry Davidson’s three part series on the report.One aspect I found interesting about the report is that when ranking trends on a scale of 1 through 9, 9 was “Excellent” and 1 was “Abysmal” – a pretty powerful and descriptive word.Part 1 – A Dose of FearPart 2 – Best Bets for 2008Part 3 – Markets to WatchMost applicable to the Charlottesville market is the (easy) prediction that the greening of real estate will continue to grow.Thanks for the copy of the report, Gerry!

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How do we think and learn?

What follows are two outstanding videos. As interesting as the videos themselves is the manner in which I found them – The first one came to light from this blog:The second one (Greg posted yesterday as well) was one of the “you might also like” recommendations at the end of the video.How we categorize things, even in real estate and MLS’, is changing. Also recommended: The Office and Ron Paul.Think about it.

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