The Tim launches the Naked Loon.
Also see: Citizen Rain and Seattle MetroBlogs coverage.
Be afraid, very afraid…
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Author Archives: Dustin Luther
With her typical common-sense approach, Rhonda lands…
…in the NYTs on this article about the impact of the housing crunch on the high-end market:
“The first step for distressed homeowners, said Rhonda Porter, a certified mortgage planning specialist and broker in Seattle, is to pull out their loan documents and see what they say.”
A Special Tribute for RCG's 3rd Birthday!
When I told my wife that RCG turned three years old today, she looked at me in disbelief…
Not because the site has been around so long, but because it seems impossible that RCG has brought so many (wonderful) changes to our life in only three years.
While RCG started out as an experiment to cheaply market my wife’s new real estate business, it turned into an epic personal journey that has allowed me to foster a fabulously healthy real estate community, learn a tremendous amount about building and marketing real estate websites, and make a living educating real estate professionals on how to improve their online marketing.
No part of this journey could have been expected or predicted, and yet, my wife, Anna, has been more than up to the challenge every time I choose to pursue another wild idea (such as spending hours each day writing posts on RCG back when we had no readers, moving to Southern California to pursue a new profession, leaving a well-paying executive position to start my own business, etc.) with my usual caffeinated gusto.
And while I normally try to take every opportunity to thank the RCG community for making everything possible (I am truly appreciative!), I want to take this special opportunity to give thanks to Anna for giving me so much support as I continue to chase my passions.
The ride has just begun!
Seattle-area agents interested in driving more web traffic?
Most people know I’m a huge advocate at generating content that leads to free search engine traffic, but I have nothing against paying for traffic if you know how to do it wisely. Along those lines, the Reachd team has teamed up with Zillow to provide ad-buying advice at Zillow’s (beautiful!) office in Downtown Seattle on the morning of April 17th. These are the same smart people behind the Ubertor content management system and I’m convinced will put on a great educational event.
You may be the most impressive part of RCG
I was just updating some of the stats that I use in my presentation in prep for this week’s event, when I noticed something that I thought RCG readers (and contributors) might appreciate.
The total number of visitors to RCG has always been impressive, but I found it wild that out of all the people who visited RCG in February 2008, over 2,800 of those people have visited the site more than 200 times! And almost 4,000 of February’s visitors have been to the site more than 100 times. Those numbers are an obvious tribute to the contributors and commenters who keep RCG interesting and relevant day-in and day-out!
A while back I spelled Seatttle with…
three “t’s” on the sidepanel and was surprised just how much traffic it brought. Because I was more concerned with being professional than traffic, I fixed the type, but Mary just reminded me of the effectiveness of the error, so I thought I’d try it out again! 🙂
And if you are looking for Seattle real estate information, dont’ be discouraged if you landed on this page! 😉 We’ve got tons of great stuff on this site!
To highlight just a few: Ardell gives local condition stats ever Sunday, Rhonda provides mortgage rate updates every Friday, and I wrote a post about moving to Seatttle a while back that is loaded with questions, answers, insights, dangers, etc. from people. (There are almost 500 comments to date!)…
Robbie, the Jedi Knight, accepts a position with the Rebel Alliance
A huge congratulations goes out to Robbie! He has been an extremely valuable member of the RCG community and I only hope we can keep him interested in real estate (especially since he runs the backend of my wife’s MLS search site!).
Congratulations to Russ Cofano
This is huge news for a local real estate company… Long-time Rain City Guide contributor, Russ Cofano, recently accepted a position as Vice President and General Counsel at John L. Scott. From an email I received from Russ:
For me, the New Year is bringing a major change. Beginning Monday, January 14, 2008, I am joining John L. Scott Real Estate as Vice President and General Counsel. The decision to leave Bullivant Houser Bailey was a difficult one as this is a truly exceptional law firm. At the same time, my new role at John L. Scott will provide unique challenges and opportunities for personal growth. John L. Scott consistently ranks in the top 10 of U.S. independent real estate brokerages and I am looking forward to helping them in their continued growth as an industry leader.
Russ was clearly instrumental in the early growth of the Rain City Guide community! And for anyone who was around for the early discussions between Russ and Ardell, it was like having a front row seat to a force of nature! I learned a ton from Russ on so many levels and am so excited to have him back “in the industry!”
By hiring Russ, John L. Scott is getting a lot more than just a superb lawyer. They are getting a thought-leader in the world of online real estate!
This week according to 4realz…
I can tell from the comments that many regular readers of RCG have been checking out the what I’ve been doing on 4realz.net. It’s been fun to try out something a bit different as I do my best to summarize the news and gossip of the real estate technology and RE.net communities.
However, besides blogging on 4realz, I’m also committed to sending out a weekly email that summarizes the news and gossip that I think the typical real estate executive should know. Interestingly, I did something like this at Move and I know from feedback I got that the email was definitely appreciated since most executives don’t have the time to follow all the blogs and news sites that they wish they could. However, I do say “executive” pretty broadly since there are a lot of people who would appreciate a weekly summary of news and gossip from the online real estate community.
I’m extremely hesitant to republish the email on 4realz as a blog post each week (despite requests) because it feels like it would be repeating the same stories that would have already been covered on the blog earlier in the week. I still haven’t figured what I will do each week, but this week I thought I would post the email here on RCG!
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While I expected it to be a slow week thanks to the holiday season, there was more than enough action to keep a blogger busy with all the big names making news week:
- Al Roker, Redfin and the Today Show. The Redfin team continued
their awesome PR run with Glenn making an appearance on the Today Show. Personally, I’m shocked
the media picks their stuff up as science, but that is neither here nor there in the larger scheme of things. - Zillow Smart Search is LIVE! Zillow announced the next generation of their search tool which features much better integration with neighborhood definitions. There’s some nifty mapping, but otherwise, most of the changes are likely to go unnoticed by the typical user.
- 4 IPOs to Watch for in 2008. The Fool is drooling over a potential Zillow IPO.
- Point2 Technologies Names Saul Klein CEO. Odd choice in my opinion and I got a bit of heat for saying so much. Also interesting that the Point2 team brings in an industry insider while the Move team (who oversee the competitor Top Producer) reach out to “internet” execs.
- Notable new feature on Estately. Galen just keeps adding features to his home search tool faster than anyone else. Someone needs to get this guy nationwide listings. 🙂
- Early holiday treats from Trulia – with new upgraded search experience. Based on consumer demand, Trulia shrinks the map and puts greater emphasis on the list view.
- LendingTree cuts work force a 3rd time within 8 months. Mortgage problems seem to be hitting LendingTree pretty hard.
- Lennar dumps properties for fraction of previous value. Is this deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars just the start
of some massive deals between new home builders an wall street? - Cops bust Realtor over raunchy dirty trick. So wrong… and yet so hard not to laugh.
- Some homes are better listed without photos, as… A picture can be worth a 1000 words.
- Move added a link to the new “alpha” versions of
realtor.com and move.com on the home page of each site. Check them out at http://beta.realtor.com and http://beta.move.com.
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By the way, if you want to subscribe to my weekly email (similar to notes above), it is 100% free and 100% opt-in. To get on the list email me at thisweek@4realz.net with a request (a simple “please include me on your weekly emails
Wow! What a ride!
About an hour ago I walked out of Move’s offices for the last time as an employee. For those of you who’ve been around RCG for a while, you’ll remember that I took a position as Director of Consumer Innovations at Move with great enthusiasm back in April of 2006. Taking the position was a huge deal for me and my family and now that I’ve decided to leave,
The amount I learned working with the people at Move was incredible. I enjoyed learning a tremendous amount about product development, marketing, PR, corporate development and much more in little over a year-and-a-half. I was laughing with another employee earlier today because we both felt we had gotten an MBA’s worth of education in an incredible short-time period.
Interestingly, I’m actually more bullish on Move now then at any time since I started getting my hands dirty at the company. The new members of the executive team are bringing on top-notch talent and starting to make some hard, but necessarily, decisions around product development and business models. My decision to leave had very little to do with the long-term prospects of the company and much more to do with the role that I would be able to play in these changes. (Plus, it didn’t hurt that some opportunities opened up in the world of consulting that were just too good to pass up.) 🙂
Talking of outside opportunities… Now that I’m no longer affiliated with Move, I plan to talk (a lot) more about ways that real estate professionals can engage consumers using online technologies. But rather than clutter up this perfectly good blog about Seattle real estate with my industry rambles, I’ve decided to focus those conversations on 4realz.net.
Please consider joining me on 4realz.net. I promise to be interesting enough that it will become a must-read (and a must-feed) for anyone interested in the future fringes of the real estate industry.