Tag Archives: site

Buyers and Sellers: Help is on the way…

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I’m pretty sure that many real estate agents wouldn’t want to hear this, but the real estate industry has been very effective at protecting their own self-interest at the expense of home buyers and sellers. There are so many useful tools that could be built, but valuable real estate data is hidden behind thick walls! But rather than focus on the problems of the industry, I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about the future…

If you’ve been reading Rain City Guide long enough, you probably know that last May I put together the first home search (“gHomes

Catching up…

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I haven’t blogged in a little while, but that is not because there is a lack of interesting things to talk about. All kinds of interesting things have been happening on the real estate front, so I’m going to attempt to catch up all in one huge post.

First off, I joined up with the Real Estate Blog Squad. The idea behind this group is that lots of real estate agents would team together to blog about topics related to the National Assn. of REALTORS® annual convention and exposition that will be going on October 28-31, 2005. In reality, I have no idea what will come out of this group, but I’m happy to take part in the experiment.

Redwood TreeNext I wanted to talk about a local news items from this previous week… Seattle Times: Seattle market: Distorted prices — or room to grow? The Seattle Times ran an article about a story I covered about the riskiest cities to live in… The only reason I mention it is that the article says: “The word went out on CNN. It ran in The Christian Science Monitor. A Seattle real-estate blog reported it, and it earned the cover-story spot on msn.com’s money page.” I’m pretty sure that I’m the only Seattle blogger that covered this story, so I’m going to hazard a guess that the Seattle Times real estate writer is now reading my blog! Welcome Elizabeth Rhodes! I definitely read just about everything you write!

After an absence of 5 days, I enjoyed reading this post from Counter Intelligence that described a situation that I’m sure is familiar to many real estate bloggers: “I’ve got to post a new article today or I’m going to lose readers.” I was surprised to hear that counter Intelligence lost 90% of their daily hits after 50 days of not posting. Contrary to the idea you might get by reading this recent article from National Association of Realtors (NAR), real estate blogging is hard work. Let this serve as a warning to real estate agents who are thinking of diving into blogging. Writing an interesting post on a daily basis is tough stuff. Make sure that you enjoy writing. Make sure that you enjoy keeping up on the news. Real estate blogs like Hot Property have an inherent advantage in that it would be so much easier with multiple bloggers all posting to the same site. Ideally, Rain City Guide will someday get about 5 of 6 different real estate agents who post articles on a regular basis. That way, any one of the agents can take a week off when they get burned out without the site suffering a blackout period.

Funny headline of the week… The Ballard News-Tribune (a local paper with a malfunctioning website) had this title for their August 3, 2005 issue: “We could get monorail first.” The article went on to describe how the Ballard segment of the Monorails Greenline would likely get built before other sections. This begs the question: Do the writers of the Ballard News-Tribune read other newspapers? . Do they know that the monorail is much closer to dead than ever being built at this point. The mayor of Seattle has given the monorail an September 15th deadline to come up with a plan or he is going to kill the entire project. The entire organization is in shambles.

Jeremy Zawodny had an interesting analysis of the insane housing market of Silicon Valley. The fact that home prices continue to rise at astronomically fast rates in Seattle, makes me glad to live in Seattle…

I think I bunched enough stuff together for one post, but I there are so many more stories to talk about… I’m just about ready to publish my first podcast for Rain City Guide. I’ve been working late into the night to create an updated MLS home search on top of google maps (nothing is ready to demonstrate yet!). Curbed nominated the “hotest” real estate agents in NY City (do we need something like that for Seattle? 🙂 )

UPDATE: . I imagine Bill Wendel over at Counter Intelligence will get a kick out of learning that even some at Wired News have been getting burned out on technology lately!

Troll Avenue North

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[photopress:victorious_half_dome.jpg,thumb,alignright]I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Yosemite to find out that two blocks of Aurora Avenue are proposed to be renamed Troll Avenue North. Such huge news! 🙂

We had a wonderful time, and while my family didn’t make it up to the top of Yosemite Falls (so we do not have a “five-years later” photo), my husband did make it up to the top of Half Dome!

[photopress:river_rafting.jpg,thumb,alignleft]With over 40 members of my family in the valley, our vacation involved lots of laid back time with family. We went on many small hikes and found time to go river rafting just about every day. So much fun!

Anyway, I’m sure that as I go through all the websites that I missed while on vacation, I’m going to find lots of stuff to blog about. I’ve got lots of reading (and writing) to do! In particular, google came out with an official “API” for their on-line mapping which should simplify the development of the ghomes tool that I’ve put together. I’m going to work on that this afternoon, and hopefully, I’ll have something interesting to share with you soon!

Yosemite Vacation

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I’m taking a week-long vacation at Yosemite National Park, but that doesn’t mean that Rain City Guide will go on a break as well… Mary Jereczek has kindly offered to step up and write posts in my absence!

This is a great time to mention that I’m really thrilled with the response that I’ve had from my call for guess bloggers. I think that these top title representatives, mortgage brokers and real estate agents offer an interesting and useful perspective and really help round out the discussion on this site! I look forward to having more guest bloggers and welcome anyone who might be interested!

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By the way, this photo of my family was taken at the top of Yosemite Falls five years ago! Obviously, my daughter has grown considerably since then! It should be a lot of fun to show her the incomparable valley again now that she is old enough to appreciate it!

Lessons learned from riding two real estate cycles

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Swinging for a HomerBill Wendel over at Boston’s Real Estate Cafe has been posting podcasts on his blog for a little while now. The interview from his latest podcast is from a woman who…

..describes lessons learned over last two real estate cycles: first losing money (at least on paper) on a starter condo purchased at the top of the bubble in Philadelphia in the mid-1980’s; then purchasing another home at the bottom of the last cycle; and ultimately hitting the real estate jackpot in Atlantic City.

To hear the podcast, follow the link to his website and then click on the link that says “Real Estate Bubble Audio Time Capsule #2”. That should download it to your machine and then open it to your default mp3 player.

What is podcasting?
In it’s simplest form, podcasting is a recording that is saved in an mp3 format that is made available via the internet. The recordings could either be groups of songs (a la a typical radio station), interviews (a la NPR), simple rants (a la many blogs), or a mix of all the above.

I’ve linked to this podcast, mainly because I’m intrigued by the idea of podcasting. I know that at some point in the future, I’ll give it a try… If you have some ideas for good podcasts (obviously the topic should be related to Seattle real estate), please let me know…. Would it be useful to have a podcast of my impression of featured listings? Are there any major players in Seattle real estate that I should interview? I could probably cover more ground in a two minute podcast than I could in a three paragraph description…

My take is that podcasting the same information that could easily be written about would be a waste of time and bandwidth. Ideally, it would be great to cover topics that can’t easily be conveyed via a written format. I’ll keep thinking about this and would appreciate your ideas.

gHomes Update #2

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Bright Water SchoolAbout a week ago, Google made an update to google maps (gmaps) which caused errors to my gHomes MLS Search (built on top of gmaps).

I finally found some time to get around to making updates to my coding so that my MLS search would work. In the process, I’ve streamlined the data conversion process, so that it now only takes me a few minutes a day (if that) to update the MLS. While the MLS search is not nearly as smooth as I’d like, I still think it is one of the most interesting ways to search the homes that are currently on the market.

The current version searches all the homes listed in the City of Seattle. I’m in the process of adding additional Cities and neighborhoods. I’d also like to add “sold” information, but that will also take some time. If you are interested in seeing where I’m going, check out:

http://raincityguide.com/ghomes

Put Yourself in Google’s Shoes

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Fixing the NetI found an excellent post where the author discusses the two methods for showing up high in Google search results. I agree with his conclusion that providing good content is a better (and more long lasting) approach than any attempt to “trick” the search engines. As a matter of fact, I would call that the guiding philosophy of this website. “Provide good content, and they will come!”

If you are thinking of starting a business-related website or blog, and you want to attract lots of hits to your website (why wouldn’t you?) I recommend reading this article:

Put Yourself in Google’s Shoes

The content based approach avoids all this hassle. You provide information rich pages which is what Mr Google and his searchers want. You join the synergy. Google is working for you, not trying to foil your latest trick.

Call for Guest Bloggers

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I had a brainstorming session with a mortgage broker this afternoon and we discussed all kinds of potential uses for generating leads on the web. I mentioned that I would be interested in having guest bloggers on my site who could give opinions on their particular area of expertise. Considering I haven’t held back in giving mortgage advice, I should at least let mortgage brokers get a word or two in.

My plan is to give a forum for real estate experts (mortgage brokers, title company representatives, contractors, etc.) to post articles (“blog entries”) on a semi-regular basis. If you fit into the “real estate” industry and would be interested in posting an article every once in a while, then email me with some of your ideas and I’ll create a username/password so that you can begin.

My requirements for posting articles are simple:

1) Post informative articles. Post that simply advertise your service won’t cut it. For example, from mortgage brokers I would like to see articles that are about current events or explanations (in plain english) of mortgage terms. Like why did the long-term interest rates go down right after the Feds recently raised the prime interest rates a quarter of a point? (I’ve got lots of other ideas, if you need some, just ask me!)

2) Work in the Seattle Area.

The main benefit of blogging on my site is that you can get increased exposure without having to build a blog of your own. (I’m starting to generate a significant amount of traffic and the site is only two months old!) Maybe you’ll find that you like blogging so much, you’ll start your own at some point in the future. Either way, you are welcome to test out the technology on my site if you are willing to add good content!

About Rain City Real Estate Guide

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Anna Luther's Sold SignHopefully you’ve noticed that this blog is not your typical real estate web site. I’ll try to answer some of the more typical questions I get here:

What is a blog?
Blog is short for “web log” and essentially, blogs started out as on-line journals. There is no fundamental difference between a blog and a website except that blogs are designed to be updated on a regular basis, whereas a typical website is not as easy to update.

Why did I forgo my website in favor of a blog?
I’ve always wanted a way to interact more and provide more timely information to my clients. The blog gives me a simple and effective medium with which to interact with you.

Another great feature of my blog is that it can be syndicated over RSS… Rather than describe this process, the end result is that you can read updates from my site directly on your “my yahoo” or “my msn” page (among MANY other RSS readers!). To add my site simply click on either of the two links:

  • add to My Yahoo!
  • my msn

Who writes on this blog?
All the entries are written by someone on my real estate team. You might have noticed that many of the blog entries are written by Dustin. Dustin is my husband and a vital part of the team. Dustin is also famous for using the “royal I” when blogging on this site. He feels no compulsion about writing things from my perspective and we’ve been married long enough that I can’t seem to stop him. 🙂

What am I trying to accomplish with this site?
There are two markets I focus on with this site: Buyers and Sellers!

For buyers, I will continue to add current information about the local real estate market and local neighborhoods so that someone who is moving to seattle will find this website informative enough that they will contact me when they are looking for an agent in the Seattle area.

For sellers, I will continue to post information about current home values and community news so that you will consider contacting me when you are looking to sell your home in the Seattle area.

Is there something else you’d like to see on this website? Just leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do!

About Me

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[UPDATE: The only piece of contact information in this post that is still relevant is my mobile phone number: (206) 251-3821. Everything else has changed in the past two years including my email: anna@raincityguide.com.]

A full-time Real Estate Agent with a keen attention to detail, I provide unparalleled service to both buyers and sellers in the North Seattle area. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a variety of remarkable homes where my team members have been able to hone our Photoshop and brochure making skills.

Education and Training
As with many real estate agents, I took a circular route into the business, but now that I’m here, I couldn’t imagine working in any other field. Originally from Russia, I earned a degree in Chemical Engineering from the Urals State Technical University. Not really an engineer at heart, I worked for a while as a model and actress in Moscow before moving to the United States. Here in the U.S., I earned a Master Certificates in both Business Administration and Marketing from U.C. Berkeley. I worked for a while for a dot com before I found my passion of working with people in the real estate business.
[photopress:Dustin_and_Anna_on_greenlake.jpg,thumb,alignleft]
Professional Summary
Having decided to specialize in Ballard, I’ve found that tremendous reception to the services I provide. My goal is to always go above-and-beyond thereby earning lifelong clients.
One way I keep my clients happy is through my tremendously talented staff that excels at designing brochures, postcards, newsletters, etc. I also work closely with a professional photographer who photographs all of my homes. In addition, I have staff with extensive graphical-information systems (GIS) experience that ensures that my market analysis information is top-of-the-line.
From the overwhelmingly positive feedback I get from clients, I’m confident I’m excelling at synthesizing available technology with a personal touch. To find out how good a real estate agent can be, contact me!

Contact Information

email: anna@annaluther.com
mobile: (206) 251-3821
office phone: (206) 407-1000
office fax: (206) 407-1010

Anna Luther
Keller Williams North Seattle
12535 15th Avenue N.E.
Seattle, WA 98125