Archive for March, 2007
I Am Spam On All Wordpress Askimet Defended Blogs
March 30th, 2007 Geekage and Blogging, Humor 5 Comments »
I have a big problem.
I am spam.
Not my email address. Not my website URL. My very name “Athol Kay” is regarded as spam by some of the anti spam measures on other peoples blogs.
Don’t ask me how it happened, I used to comment a whole lot all over the place. Then suddenly it was like a switch was thrown and I am spam.
I write a nice thoughtful comment. Click. Nothing. Then I have to email the blog owner to fish my comment out of the garbage. It gets really really old.
I’ve tried asking Askimet to unspammerize me. No response.
Kevin Boer kindly tried a mass commenting and fishing out experiment to see if that would trigger a return to grace. No dice. So I’m fighting back the only way I know how.
With a Sock Puppet.
So if you see a friendly, witty, charming sock puppet out there gracing your blogs with comments.
Be gentle.
Second Grade Homework Is Harder Than You Think
March 29th, 2007 Family Life, Humor 4 Comments »
My daughter had homework and my wife was helping her. Make a list of 10 things that float. Easy.
A piece of wood.
A rubber duck.
A boat.
A bar of soap.
“A what?”
“A bar of soap.”
“What’s that?”
“Well it’s soap, but in bar form.”
“…”
“It’s like a solid piece of soap, like a block of soap.”
“Like it’s frozen?”
“No. It’s just solid. Thats how soap used to come.”
“How did you get it out of the bottle?”
“It didn’t come in a bottle, it came wrapped in paper.”
“…”
“Really, a bar of soap. It floats.”
“Are you tricking me?”
“Go ask Dad then”
Pitter Patter…
“Dad, is it true what bars of soap are?”
“Yep, it used to be that if you said a bad word, your Mom told you a story about how her Mom would have made you bite into one to teach you not to say bad words.”
“…!?”
“…”
“I’m trying to do my homework...”
How To Make Your Zillow Ad Better In Six Easy Steps
March 29th, 2007 Deeper Thoughts, Family Life, Geekage and Blogging, Staging and Clutter 5 Comments »
Zillow.com can be a wonderful tool for advertising your house no matter if you are trying the FSBO route, or using an agent. However I see many homes advertised on Zillow that are failing to show themselves well.
Here’s a few easy steps to get you looking better.
1. Use Lots Of Photos – You simply must have multiple photos of your house for people to see. The more photos you have, the better chance of a sale you have. Buyers just assume a lack of photos implies that the house isn’t worth looking at.
It’s also important to use a good quality camera, ideally with a wide angled lens, to get the best results. Also it’s well worth the extra few minutes to edit your photos. Just simple things like light balancing, cropping and correcting camera rotation make a huge difference in the final product.
2. Price Near The Zestimate – Not so key for the Make Me Move option, but if you are FSBO or sale by agent this is critical. Buyers will automatically look at the zestimate, look at your price and compare the two. A Zillow buyer is just as smart as a Zillow seller. You wouldn’t be fooled, so why would they?
3. Update The Facts – Zillow gives you the option to edit the facts of the home. The square footage etc. If you have any changes, or the Zillow data is wrong, change it as soon as you can. Even if the change is a minimal one, you should do it. It shows you care about the house. If there is a good reason the price is different than the zestimate, make sure you back that up as well as you can.
4. Fill Up “About This Home” – This is your chance to sell the property as best you can. Tell the reader about every positive detail of the house you can think of. Be as specific as you can. Don’t say “nice kitchen”, say “granite countertops, new fridge, dual sinks”. Don’t say “finished lower level”, say “walkout lower level, high ceiling, new carpet”. The more details you tell the better. Zillow doesn’t work by magic, you have to try and sell the house.
5. Easy To Show – Make sure you have some way to let the buyers know your house is going to be easy to show. With so much inventory on the market, if buyers can’t see it now, they simply move on to the next house.
6. Agree To Work With Buyer Agents – If you don’t, you simply cut yourself out of a huge slice of the serious buyers out there. Buyers like agent representation and really only experienced investors buy houses without it these days.
That’s six ways you can make your Zillow ad better. I wish you the best of luck selling.
Athol Kay
Just a Web 2.0 Thing On YouTube
March 28th, 2007 Geekage and Blogging, Humor 2 Comments »
I’m Bringing Sexy Back Justin Timberlake 3.0 Million Views
I’m Bringing Paxil Back Some Other Guys 1.7 Million Views
Maybe there is no A-List anymore….
The Bristol Connecticut School Board PR Disaster
March 28th, 2007 Connecticut, Family Life 2 Comments »
Any time a School Board can get 350+ parents to a board meeting – on the very same night that parent teacher conferences are going on – you know that things are going less than perfectly. The Bristol Eastern High School auditorium was packed for the meeting Tuesday night.
To be fair, the School Board is one of those thankless tasks required for functioning civilization. Someone has to oversee the schools and keep everything up to snuff. The Bristol school system is very good and in a general sense I think Bristol parents are pleased with it.
The trouble begins in the form of two needs. Firstly, that some of Bristol’s elementary and middle schools are aging and need updating or replacing. Secondly, that the School Board has decided that students are better served by a K-8 school, than a K-5 elementary and a 6–8 middle school. The Board asserted K-8 was better for students at the meeting, but failed to produce any data in the form of handouts or slides backing that position up.
The School Board essentially stealth presented the City Council with a plan to build two new larger K-8 schools, upgrade two others and close four schools. Price tag is $96 Million. The City Council appear somewhat dumbfounded at what the School Board delivered up to them to vote on and largely forced the Board to seek input from the public. Which resulted in the meeting on Tuesday night.
Well that $96 Million adds two 900 student schools, but closes four schools, for a net gain of 232 students. Thats about $431,000 per student seat. Doesn’t seem quite enough. I would think that by the time the schools are completed Bristol’s growth would have swallowed up all those seats and be hungry for more.
The proposed Divinity Street site for development involves taking 35 residences under eminent domain. That may effect fewer individuals, but unquestionably affect them enormously.
The big wrinkle is that one of the schools slated for closure is Greene-Hills elementary in the Forestville section of Bristol. For those not fortunate to live in Forestville, it’s one of the nicer areas of Bristol. I’m not talking pinkys up and lace gloves as we sip our tea nice. I’m talking about home ownership, pay our taxes, go to work and mow the grass nice. In the interests of full disclosure – this is where my own children go to school. Suffice to say the Greene-Hills contingent was very noticeable at the meeting.
The alarms started going off for me when I learned that Scott Gaudet, the Principal of Greene-Hills, learned of the the proposed closing by reading about it in the Bristol Press less than two weeks ago. That pretty much sums up the Boards communication skills. Then setting up a special meeting to discuss the changes on parent conference night just added fuel to the fire.
Closing Greene-Hills (which is aging, though hardly falling down) would leave an entire suburb without a single school. The effect on property values will be very damaging as young families will simply attempt to leave or avoid the area completely. Forestville students would have to be bused across town to get to one of the other schools. The School Board admitted last night that the entire town would have to be redistricted, which would likely have students moved from one school to another across the entire town.
The potential light at the end of the tunnel is that someone in high places finally realized that there is an all but abandoned car dealership immediately adjacent to Greene-Hills. It’s been that way for years. The owner already has the property listed for sale. Plus it’s… well BIG. So tappity tappity tappity out pops a potential plan to rebuild Greene-Hills bigger and better. Or at least an artists impression of a plan. No discussion on costs etc. Why this was not thought of before now is unclear, it seems an obvious solution.
All in all the School Board does many things well. Bristol education is good and improving, the Board is to be commended for its part in that. It’s just a completely bone headed move to be anything other than using heavy, proactive communication, while advocating major changes. Specially changes that would worry large number of the tax paying public.
Given the choice between closing Greene-Hills and rebuilding it bigger and better, it seems a no brainer choice to Forestville residents.
The Original Submitted Plan - PDF (This was submitted to the City Council in early March. Note the closure of Greene-Hills mentioned on page 31 & 32 and the absense of a “Plan C” to re-build Greene-Hills)
Most Recent Board of Education Minutes (Feb 7 minutes, note on page 6 the complete absense of looking at Greene-Hills as a possible site to rebuild. The March minutes are not published as yet on the Bristol Education Website)
I Win The Carnival Eh
March 27th, 2007 Family Life, Staging and Clutter No Comments »
Larry Cragun was especially kind in awarding me the Gold Medal aka outright win for the Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate.
My winning post was A Dumpster is Cheaper Than Selling Your House. I wish I knew why posts that take 15 minutes to write do better than posts that take 2 hours to write.
Silver went to Amy L. Fontinelle for her article: Home Inspection Do You Really Need One?
Bronze went to Ann O’Connell: What Can A Stager Do For Me - It’s Gorgeous Outside
More Carnival goodies with the Carnival of Real Estate hosted at miOakland by Maureen Francis.
The top pick being…. Michael Wurzer belts out a comprehensive discussion about the past, present and future of a consolidated MLS in Raging Regionals.
Nigel Swaby’s FHA Mortgages to the Rescue
Dan Melson’s How Can A Temporary Buydown Help Realtors and Agents?
Kevin Boer Thank You Ben, Patrick, and Keith, uber-Bubblistsas, For Helping My Clients Tremendously
Nina discusses Where to Live: Gay Ghetto or Integrated Neighborhood
Teri Lussier Hi. I’m Teri… And I’m aghast.
Diane Tuman Do You Have a Neighbor from Hell?
Jay Thompson Real Estate Web Sites: A Minimalist Approach
Ben Kakimoto Seattle & Condotels - imploding explosion?
Jim Cronin 9 Examples Of How Blogging Will Have You Overcoming Real Estate Objections
Bigger Pockets hosted the Carnival of Real Estate Investing.
Michael Cook writes a great piece on being persistant in Persistence: The Investors Greatest Tool
The mysterious Victor The Importance of Rental Property Depreciation,
Paul (another with no last name) tells us about a situation that a few investors will deal with in Life Estate and IRS liens
Henrik Edberg provides some outstanding motivation in his Positivity Blog’s Why Some People Almost Always Are Successful.
While Andrea Dickson’s How to Avoid Foreclosure focuses on the typical homeowner and not the investor,
Silicon Valley Blogger 3 Top Reasons Why People Go Bankrupt.
And thats the real estate carnivore for this week.
March 27th, 2007 Geekage and Blogging No Comments »
Updated The real estate blogroll in a great rush.
If I missed you please comment or email me.
Sporting The “Save Athol” T-Shirt
March 26th, 2007 Family Life, Geekage and Blogging 3 Comments »
Got some of the My Services links up and running. Starting to show how the static pages and the blog pages blend finally.
Next on the list is the Buyer Rep Tour, then the Listing Tour. Gah really have to update the blogroll and the Connecticut links too.
I’m holding off on reporting on the Carnivals until the Consumer Focused one is up tomorrow.
Gonna be up late again…
It is kinda fun though. I’m just amazed sometimes by the whole blogging thing.
For Jay Thompson – The Link Love is in the orginial post. For the record I am 0 for 2 in getting laid on days wearing this shirt. It’s not all that good really.
