Phoenix Real Estate | Phoenix Homes for Sale | All Phoenix Real Estate » 2007 » August

The Phone’s Been Ringing …

… the question remains whether the offers will follow.

Four of my eight active listings were viewed today, at least to my knowledge (with the vacant homes, I won’t know until the lockbox report comes through tomorrow.) At least one of the homes is among the final cut for one particular buyer. And there were sign calls today, the return of a seemingly dying breed.

One of the buyers, from what I’m being told, is trying to decide between my listing in Avondale and two homes in Surprise. “If only a home like yours was in Surprise,” the agent relayed to me, referring both to the upgrades and the price. Of course, that’s the point. A similarly upgraded home in Surprise would cost substantially more than the home I have listed in Avondale. What ifs are great, but there’s also the reality to deal with.

Loyal readers will be stunned to hear I raised the possibility of an open house with one of my sellers. I’m proud to say education has paid off in this case as they’re not inclined to pack up the kids and the dog and disappear for hours on a Sunday afternoon knowing the likelihood is their home will not sell during the open house.

Will one of these calls end up in a successful sale? Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix real estate

Popularity: 6% [?]

I Used to Get 5,372 Hits a Day Until My Mom Learned to Stop Hitting Refresh

This morning, in just a few hours time, the Premiership opens another season in England. I realize this interests virtually no one here, but I know Athol cares and I apparently continue to rack up international visitors based on the little map on the right.

(Incidentally, there’s a real estate angle coming up. Maybe even a Phoenix real estate angle, just for the keyword joy of it all. Play along with me for a moment.)

A colleague and I were discussing the quality of play any given weekend and the consensus was the best matches are between middle-of-the-table clubs because these teams have little if anything to lose. They’re not going to finish high enough in the table to qualify for Europe and they’re not going to finish low enough to be relegated. They’re just going to play their games and let the cards fall where they may.

These teams take chances and, on occasion, display individual moments of brilliance.

One of the biggest problems with American soccer is there is virtually no individual creativity. There are none of those moments, as described in Vision Quest, that raise your heart because you suddenly know what man is capable of achieving. Due largely to the regimented system of youth play in this country, American soccer is methodical to the extreme. Effective to some extent, but often uninspired and unentertaining.

The same can be said for the vast majority of real estate blogs, and for the same reasons. Some agents took the plunge and will write about nearly whatever whenever they choose. They have a writers’ soul and are more concerned with the end product than the count of keywords in each paragraph.

Perhaps the SEO value is lower but there’s a better chance of elevating the spirit of the readers, of making the readers realize the human mind is capable of more than repeating the same key phrases ad nauseum.

Real estate blogging has begotten a cottage industry of those creating blogging platforms and dispensing blogging advice. Some of the advice is useful. Most is as inspirational as stereo instructions. Keep it short. Add some pictures. Pack a few keywords. Stay on point. Did we mention to keep it short? Don’t write about blogging. Don’t write about national topics. Write local. But keep it short. And add some more pictures.

You almost can envision some blog authors’ lips moving as they count the steps like some Arthur Miller student. One two three photo, one two three keyword, one two three photo, one two three Technorati tags and we’re done.

Over the past couple of days, the arguments have been less about the methodology of the writing than how to measure your effectiveness. I’m fully in the camp of those who only believe in counting unique visitors because my own hosting servers’ stats are notoriously inflated.

But you know what? When I first started my original website, I was happy to view inflated numbers. Because they built confidence. And confidence, even when built of faulty figures, is confidence nevertheless. To paraphrase Crash Davis, “if you think you’re winning because you’re having sex or because you’re not having sex, then you are. And you should know that.”

At the end of the day, the efficacy of any given blog platform, any given set of guidelines, matters only to those trying to promote their own platforms or guidelines. Let Odysseus and the Fairy Blogmother and the Tomato step into an octagon and sort it out already. Three blogs enter! One blog leaves! Three blogs enter! One blog leaves!

For those of us who set out to write the posts daily in hopes of finding a topic that resonates, it doesn’t matter if an agent in North Dakota wants to judge their success by the total hits on a daily basis regardless of IP resets and the rest.

Let them believe what they believe if it helps them achieve what they want to achieve. Because for those blogging for business, the only numbers that really matter are those being entered onto a deposit slip. The rest is so much fluff.

Technorati Tags: real estate blogging, real estate marketing