Rain City Guide Year In Review

The most popular articles on RCG from this past year as measured in total hits:

(I encourage all RCG contributors to do something similar):

  • 10 Great Conversations. This was the first of my “list” posts and was a lot of fun to put together…
  • The Best Online Real Estate Marketing Time Can Buy. Getting people to return to your site day in and day out is simple (but not easy)… Be interesting!
  • Improving Online Home Valuations? I like this article mainly because it jump-started a bunch of internal discussions at Move about real estate blogging.
  • Plus How to Link. I include this one because I’m often shocked at how many real estate agents think they can blog without linking…
  • Paying for the Privilege of Marginalization. I don’t think the real estate community at large has really come to grips with what it means to take part in some of these online classified sites and the tech-savvy agents seem to have given into their fatalistic instincts in terms of their industry as a whole. Fascinating stuff that borders on the “can’t tread there anymore” territory for me… ๐Ÿ™‚

And finally, I found it particularly fun to read the slew of interviews I did at the beginning of last year. Lots of stuff has changed in a year in real estate blogging, but not as much as you might think!

Permeating Self-Promotion

Here’s a few stories from around the real estate blogsphere I found interesting…

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Phil is obviously have some fun in Boise, although others may find his anatomy of a listing he won’t take more relevant to recent RCG conversations…

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Jonathan sends out a blogger’s prayer and some really nice words about RCG.. Thanks!

Fortunately, I ran into Ardell DellaLogia, her blog, and the Rain City Guide. Between her advice and her blog, and the larger Seattle based blog to which she contributed, I got a sense of what a blog could be – articulate, meaningful, educational. And that’s what I decided I wanted and what I’ve strived for, with mixed success.

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The xBroker is clearly and definitely over-the-top. Yet, despite the self-promotion that permeates all of his posts, I really like this guy. In emails and blog posts, he’s come across as someone who is definitely informed and wants to communicate his knowledge… There’s definitely a there, there…

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Tech alert: Greg Linden turned me on to a very interesting post by Google’s Steve Yegge, where he looks at the management of Google through the lens of the Agile programming philosophy. The story would have been good enough, but then Microsoft’s Dare Obasanjo made it better by comparing the ideas to the (failed) management structure at Enron… All three posts are worth reading (but make sure you have some time!).

Moving Forward…

I’ve been a little busy lately, so I haven’t had a lot of time to give an update on some of my favorite conversations around the web… Nonetheless, I’m back for an abrivated version (i.e. only 9 articles instead of the usual 10)…

Beau turned me on to a great article by Jay regarding the 30-year trend for Mortgage Rates… Interesting stuff. Also, don’t miss Jay’s tribute to Harry Ramos

I just got an email from someone at Windermere letting me know about Windermere’s new (beta) mapping platform… This is an update to the beta mapping platform they released a little over a year ago and I think they’ve made some great improvements… Here are some features I like: (1) Simple map-based search, (2) intuitive zoom feature, (3) Simple pop-up interface, (4) the filter tool is relatively straightforward, (5) viewing the details doesn’t require a page reload, (6) same with viewing the “list of homes”, (7) saving, emailing and/or contacting an agent can all be done without leaving the map view (8) simple city, state, zip box allows for easy navigation to distant locations… The only complaint I have is that the design doesn’t feel polished, but considering it is a beta and the technology works well, the design is minor…

Steve Weise also let me know about his map-based appraisal tool he recently released and asked me to solicit feedback from the RCG community… His interface is too GIS-specific for my tastes, but maybe other’s will find it interesting and/or useful.

Clever, but probably too simplistic, Rob let me know about his collection of quotes that compare the great depression to today’s housing market. Any way you look at it, he provides a good read…

Greg picked up the new Move commercials on YouTube… The latest fun news around Move is that my favorite commercial (Search) got picked up by AdForum and is currently displayed on their front page!

I really like how Zachary picked up the ball and started posting videos of his properties… They are not high art, but I think they are darn useful, especially for someone selling land in such a beautiful area!

Sometimes being a great agent means divulging the good with the bad… Osman tells us how people can and do loose money in real estate

I hate homework too!!!

The NYTimes real estate blog is officially dead. (although it is everywhere now, I first saw it on Luxury Sarasota Living). I can’t say I’m particularly sad, because the main editor seemed to have such a thing against real estate agents that his blogging on the subject just wasn’t very interesting… (Marlow also noticed this tendency of Damon).

More Bed Hopping with the Competition

  1. Matt Goyer, of Urbnlivn fame, just accepted a position at Redfin. I wonder if he’ll keep up urbnlivn, or quit in favor of the Redfin blog like Rob. Just reading that article about Rob reminds me how much things have changed in the past six months…
  2. Anthony Allan put together a nice post on five steps to Realtor nirvana.
  3. Tim shows the Seattle Bubble is more popular than Rain City Guide! And wants a front-page link from RCG in the same post! I like Merv’s approach to giving site stats better (i.e. keep me out of it!) ๐Ÿ™‚
  4. Meanwhile, the classic over-achiever (who happens to be a damn good writer) follows Tim’s lead today and shows me up by taking my idea (list of 10) and doing it better
  5. Niki let me know about the massive updates that he just unrolled at HomeThinking. He’s got a pretty comprehensive database of sold listings and my understanding is that he is attempting to get people to review agents for as many transactions as possible. It might sound unintuitive for agents to support a site that allows users to comment on them, but Nike (and Mike of Altos Research) seem convinced. Niki also mentioned a bunch of interesting features including a GeoRSS feed of his data so that it can be syndicated far and wide.
  6. I also noticed that HomeThinking is syndicating Real Time Pricing Trends from Altos Research in selected markets. Here’s their chart for Seattle:
  7. Prices for SEATTLE

  8. Osman writes about an interesting “green” development in Aurora, CO that would “encompass nearly 3,000 housing units, 1.7 million SQFT of retail, and 2.8 million SQFT of office space” if fully built out!
  9. Remembering Katrina.
  10. Google now allows you to download and print out old books that they’ve scanned from some of the nations largest libraries. Very cool. Not only that, but they recently introduced a news archive search that has scanned 200 years worth of news. Wow!
  11. Not only is Noah is off enjoying a trip in Europe at this moment, but he should be officially mawwied by now. Congratulations!

10 things I learned from my stats tonight

It’s been a long while since I posted about traffic on RCG. Two reasons come to mind… One, I’ve been swamped in starting my new job and never got around to updating my excel sheet and two, I knew we weren’t seeing much growth, so what’s the point ๐Ÿ™‚

However, I took a little time out tonight to play around with RCG stats and I was actually surprised (in a good way!).

First I’ll give two charts and then I’ll explain what I learned from my research. The first chart looks at visitors and the search engines that they are coming from, while the second chart compares the growth in unique visitors to the total visitors to give an idea of how many people are returning to the site on a regular basis…

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  1. While traffic may not be growing exponentially any more, we’re still gaining new unique visitors at a relatively healthy clip. (If you take out all the Zillow-hype related traffic in February of this year, then the chart would look a lot more like exponential growth! ๐Ÿ™‚ )
  2. Google provides a majority of our unique visitors (almost 15K hits last month alone) and far outweighs any other traffic source (it is all organic traffic as I don’t spend any money on AdSense).
  3. MSN and Yahoo still have not figured out how to parse through the glut of Seattle real estate content in order to drive more traffic to RCG! ๐Ÿ™‚
  4. The ratio of total visitors to unique visitors has always hovered between 3.0 and 4.0. This tells me a fair number of people continue to return to RCG and it increases as we attract more unique visitors. It also tells me we haven’t found the viral “secret sauce” that causes either a ton of unique visitors (who could care less about a majority of our content) or a super sticky feature that causes new visitors to come back at a higher rate.
  5. 61% are using Internet Explorer, 23% are using Firefox. The rest go using “Unknown” (8%), Safari (4%), and others…
  6. The top 10 search phrases (like [Seattle Real Estate] and [real estate blog] account for a combined 7.2 of all search engine traffic. The other 92.8% of search engine traffic comes from more obscure phrases. (Think Long Tail!)
  7. Traffic is highest around lunch (between 11am and 2pm).
  8. Mondays get hit the hardest while Saturdays are the slowest days on RCG.
  9. Seattle Bubble (404 hits), Ardell (399), and Bloodhound (384) are the three blogs that sent the most traffic to RCG in August!
  10. Google analytics tells me that of all the unique visitors in August, 1,333 had been to RCG more than 200 times!!! (4,710 unique visitors have been to the site over 25 times).

Seattle Beaches Offer Unique Views

Today’s theme? Fun with real estate!

  1. Marlow provides a list of entertaining stories about hijacks (along with some good-natured teasing about the high PubSub ranking or her PI blog!)…
  2. Glenn thinks that we should change the title of Seattle Eric’s post because we’re not being fair. “The original post should be corrected out of fairness to make it clear that we use the same feed as every other Internet site…” Considering his praying mantis reference (and his defense of the reference), his comment makes today’s list because it gave me the best laugh of the day.
  3. Realtor.com, Jan 1997: “If you’re ready to find a home, browse through more than 517,000 homes presented by 112 participating REALTORยฎ Multiple Listing Services in 41 States.” (Lots more early corporate websites…)
  4. I had a blast at MindCamp2.0 and am thinking of flying up for 3.0.
  5. Is there room for two dog-related real estate blogs?
  6. Glenn Roberts points us to a great story about the Yes Men. These guys convinced conference organizers that they were legitimate HUD officials who wanted to make an announcement about the future of New Orleans’ public housing. Following a speech by Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin, the HUD official announced a complete reversal of policy. Ali G would be proud.
  7. Promoting a real estate blog is tough stuff. Luckily Hanan is constantly throwing ideas our way… (includes an informative link on why no one is reading your blog!)
  8. Seattle beaches make the news! It’s not news, it’s fark!
  9. A great sense of humor make Maureen’s blog a lot of fun to read… (Her subtitle being a great example: “This is not the best blog in Columbus Ohio! This is a blog about what is best in Columbus…”). Her latest article letting us know that Columbus, Ohio is rainier than Seattle is much appreciated!
  10. Made me think of of the insufferable bastard:

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10 Great Reasons NOT to use WordPress…

As many of you know, I’m normally a huge fan of using WordPress (in both the hosted and self-hosted formats), but tonight I’m not feeling so generous…

  1. WordPress blogs can be hacked! (If you came here yesterday, then you know what I mean!)
  2. It’s open-source with no one to call when your site goes down, especially not on a Sunday night of a three-day weekend.
  3. Even if you do find someone who could help, they will likely blame your problems on lax security (and they’re probably right)
  4. After hours of backing up, reinstalling, and general complaining, you may not know what security lapse you made (i.e. they could be back tomorrow!)
  5. Should your site ever get hacked, expect that it will occur while you’re on a two-day rafting trip on the beautiful Kern River!
  6. Moving photos and other files between servers and hard-drives (while trying to move fast and keep an organized filing structure) is a pain.
  7. Your site might turn out to spend a day displaying anti-Semitic remarks (OUCH!).
  8. Despite the “1-step” updates advertised by the WP crew, updating a WP blog is a pain and no fun, but obviously important, and will never be forgotten again!
  9. There are some groups you just don’t want to be associated with.
  10. BTW, if something looks fishy on the site, please let me know. I’ve deleted and reinstalled every file I could find and I’m sure I missed a few details! (The sidepanel on the wiki comes to mind, but I’ll have to wait until another day to fix that issue!)

Thanks to everyone who sent me a note alerting me to the hack! It’s awesome to find out just how many people are looking out for RCG! ๐Ÿ™‚

Flaming for Ardell

There’s definitely a tech bent to today’s list…

  1. Starting off with Niki’s interesting take on the Reply.com launch. Niki runs Homethinking, a site dedicated to letting users review agents. I had a chance to talk with him at SF Connect over a beer (or two or three) and got to learn a fair bit about his site. It is definitely worth checking out as there is a lot to the backend of what he’s doing and it is not necessarily what you might fear (assuming you’re an agent!).
  2. Inside Google talks about a fun press release from Intermedia that talks to the snarky discussions that Galen and Robbie have been having around online office applications. Tech blogger Om Malik gives his reason for not using google’s new service.
  3. Others are asking if Google services are joined too tightly? I’d be really curious to get Robbie’s take on that.
  4. Thinking of Google, Ardell, does it help that Google could could be adding 1000 people in Bellevue? (via Greg)
  5. I’m not the only one thinking of Ardell… I noticed someone trying to start a flame war on Craigslist over Ardell (look for the post title: “Get the feeling Realtors read from a script?”)… It was great to see a few people come to her defense and unlike so much of the stuff over there, the flamewar never materialized.
  6. I’m all over microformats, so I was glad to see someone write this post about understanding microformats for the non-technical web professional or marketer. Most relevant to real estate is the hListing format currently being deployed by Edgeio.
  7. Watch out when Greg’s talking about rethinking everything. ๐Ÿ™‚
  8. Also, considering Greg’s opinion on hosted blogging platforms is not exactly private knowledge, I thought he might enjoy this comic from Chris Pirillo
  9. The blogger from from hismove (a christian real estate network???) points out an interesting chart from the NY Times displaying the inflation adjusted home prices in the US since 1890.
  10. Not only are the For Sale By Locals people ready to launch, but these people are serious about going international. Interestingly, they will be launching their official site at a conference in Bolivia. Their temp site looks really bad in firefox, which doesn’t bode well for them in my mind, but considering the massive activity on their blog as of late, I’m definitely interested in seeing what they produce.

Would you lie for God?

Yesterday’s theme was PreFab, today I’m back to simply providing links to 10 interesting real estate conversations…

  1. Prosper is an online marketplace for people to lend money to other people. Shaun has been playing with Prosper and has some interesting observations.
  2. I don’t agree with Mark’s conclusions, but I think he makes an interesting case that a good time to “upgrade” is in a down market. (via Steph)
  3. For those looking to improve things before they sell, Rory provides some great home improvement links.
  4. If you are going to be upgrading (up market or down), you’d be wise to follow Noah’s advice and sell first!
  5. Will the number of sold homes rise in August as Bill suggests? But I sincerely doubt it.
  6. Todd, since you asked… My take is that if you are going to change domains, you want to do it sooner than later. You’ve still got lots and lots of growth left in your site, but the longer you wait, the harder it will get. Even better, consider getting a hosted version of WordPress that you can put under your own domain. Many hosts have made it so that there is a “one button” install of wordpress and they even manage the upgrades on the backend. (WordPress.org has a list of their “preferred” hosts.) In the long run, this will definitely give you the most flexibility with things like video/podcasts and stat tracking.
  7. Jim’s thinking he wants a sideblog plugin… I’m thinking just take notes and when you get to 10, hit publish. Have you noticed? ๐Ÿ™‚
  8. Fran is good for providing a useful tip every few days… Today it is about the importance of the buyer walkthrough.
  9. Jay Thompson (of AZ) gives us a “pick of the week” that includes one hell of a house!
  10. Larry Cragun tells us to watch out for real estate transactions involving religious institutions. Some people are more than happy to lie for God.

I’m actually shocked at the number of emails these lists have generated. Don’t people know I have a job? ๐Ÿ˜‰

We Deliver Anywhere

PreFab housing is a foreign concept to me, so I decided to investigate…

  1. There is no single definition of prefab. In fact, one could argue that almost every house built today has elements of prefabrication, since components such as roof trusses and windows are built off-site. Prefab can perhaps be best understood as a continuum with several points along a pathโ€”from a unique, custom-designed, stick-built home at one extreme to a complete factory-built house delivered on-site as a single unit.”
  2. [photopress:FF_82_prefab3_f.jpg,thumb,alignright]Are prefab homes destined for middle America? “Other architects are embracing this vision of mass customization. Charlie Lazor, a founder of the iconic Blu Dot furniture company, recently left to start his own concern selling FlatPak houses. Los Angeles-based architecture firm Marmol Radziner + Associates just opened a 64,000-square-foot factory to fabricate the steel frames for its new prefab line. And renowned LA architect Ray Kappe has designed a model for a prefab venture started by former dotcom mogul Steve Glenn.”
  3. The people from Royal Homes Modern remind us that size isn’t everything (so does the WSJ)
  4. However, small does not mean cheap… At least when Ray Kappe is involved.
  5. Prefab park?
  6. Wouldn’t it be nice if Seattle Modern got “modern” (i.e. a blog!) so that I could add him to my feed reader and link to his articles?
  7. Modern MyWay: Modern-style designs submitted by Dwell readers.
  8. Allison (the recently announced former editor at Dwell) literally wrote the book on PreFab.
  9. (Considering Alison helped market modular homes in addition to being an editor, Dwell has some work to do to fill her shoes…)
  10. Container Bay: “for shipping container enthusiasts”.