ActiveBob.....It's always Raining!

I have been pouring over posts for the last hour and there is one kind of post that just confuses the heck out of me. It's the infamous market report post. I have seen some fantastic market reports posted on ActiveRain in the last few years. There are a handful of people that I will actually stop and read a market report if they post it and I come across it. However, most of them fall into the 'very mundane' (common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative) category.

If I was the average Joe Plumber looking for information about housing in my home town, I can promise you that a blog post with a bunch of stats about average sales price, days on market, inventory levels and whatever other BORING garbage your MLS will automatically populate would not do anything for me. Why?

BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE NUMBERS MEAN!

You are the real estate professional (supposedly). Do me, the consumer, a favor and INTERPRET the data for me. Take those numbers and make some sense of them. Tell me what inventory level means in relation to me buying or selling a house.....why? Because I don't know the difference between 50 days on market and 100 days on market. Anybody with access to the MLS can pull those reports up and copy and paste them into a blog. Not anyone can interpret the data and make it worth me looking at.

How would you feel if you walked into your financial advisors office and he/she took out a bunch of excel graphs and said, "here you go, good luck figuring out what to buy, but if I were you I'd really pay attention to this market cap number right here". It's almost laughable yet day after day I see real estate professionals posting market stats with no explanation of what they mean.

The only thing I can figure is that you withhold the explanation in hopes that someone will be so awed by your magical statistics that they will immediately pick up the phone and call you for your expert opinion. Do yourself and them a favor and just give them the explanation while you have them on your post. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe withholding the explanation is helping drive call volume, but it seems far fetched to me. If I land on your post today, the chances I am in the market to buy today are not very high. Most likely I just started getting really interested in the market but I am still a ways off of purchasing. But if you were to give me good solid information that I could understand and present it in a fashion that made me think you knew what you were doing above and beyond you know where the control+c and the control+v button are, there is a great chance I'll be coming back to see what you think next month and the month after until I am ready to buy.

As consumers have access to unparalleled amounts of information your position as professional is incumbent upon you being able to INTERPRET that information for them.

Please Please Please interpret your boring stats for me!

(I'm sending an ActiveRain T-shirt to the next three people that send me a link to a market report post that I could actually learn something from as a consumer because the shirt says 'your personal real estate think tank' and not 'good luck trying to figure out what the *&$# I'm talking about')

(rant over.......I'm going home to start my vacation)

 

Want to meet for coffee?!?!?!?!?!?

Beans to Brew Cafe at 6177 Lake Michigan Drive in Allendale, Michigan isn't your average run-of-the-mill coffee shop!! It is special in so many ways!  Marcia VanderMolen, who owns Beans To Brew with her fiance Jim Wood, has been the propritor for two years but it has been in the Allendale area for about 10 years.  She says it has the atomosphere of the show Cheers in that it seems you can always run into someone you know .

~~Chocolate is an Essential Nutrient~~

As you walk in the door you can almost feel the four walls calling you, "come in, sit down, relax with your friends have a cup of coffee".  And if that isn't enough, the comfy sofa off to the side says, "bring a book, read and have a Raspberry Cloud".  The coffee house is comfy and welcoming from the second you walk in the door.  The quotes stenciled around the walls are so whimsical and fun.

 

~~Life's to Short for Bad Coffee!~~

 

The Signature coffee's are the best.  If these coffee names don't make your mouth water, I don't know what will.  How about a Milky Way, Sugar Daddy, Caramel Decadence, Snow Cap, Kahlua Mocha or a Mocha Blanca?  Or if you are one that watches your sugar like I am, try the Catwalk Skinny, Nutty Buddy, Chocolate Lovers Latte, Leprechaun, French Kiss or a Coco Beach.  Am I making you thirsty yet? . .  .Don't worry, Beans to Brew is ready to serve it up with a smile.

 

 

                                                                     ~~Lifes is too Short, Eat Desert First~~

But wait . . .    They also have a complete menu, from sandwiches to paninis, salads, desserts and pastries.  On this particular visit they had recently introduced the Laker Club with ham, turkey, lettuce and tomato with ranch-mayo dressing on a wheat tortilla.  Are you hungry and thirsty now?

 

Beans to Brew is a favorite place for friends to get together, laugh and enjoy themselves.  On this particular day, I walked in to find my neighbor who lives behind me enjoying coffee with her friends.  Their laughter was contagious and I got an opportunity to apoligize to her for my leaf burning from the week before--truly I wasn't trying to smoke her out!!! 

 

                 ~~A balanced diest is a cookie in each hand~~

 

 

 

It is also a warm and welcoming place for business people to meet their clients, which is what I was doing that day.  Like so many, I work out of my home so I land at Beans To Brew on a regular basis to search for homes in West Michigan with my clients or discuss our next plan of action to get their home sold.  Beans to Brew is a perfect place to meet for a business lunch as they provide free wireless-- a must in today's technological world.

                   ~~Eat well, laugh often, and love much~~

 

Marcia is getting married on November 30, 2008 so stop in and say congratulations!

To celebrate she is offering a free cinnamon role with the purchase of a double or triple signature drink. To get your cinnamon roll, all you have to do is print this blog and bring it in for your free cinnamon roll.  Offer good  through the end of the year--December 31, 2008.

Hours are:   Monday - Thursday 7-7, Friday 7-6 and Saturday 7:30-4  CLOSED  SUNDAYS  Phone:  616-895-9099

**Update: Beans to Brew has been a fatality of the economy and closed its doors 12/30/08.

 

I apologize for the long post--but it is an easy read.  I truly tried to shorten it up-but I just couldn't figure out what to cut.

~~~~~~~~ How a trail ride parallels Life~~~~~~

We are home from our vacation. The "we" would be me, my husband Ed, our dog Hailee and our two horses, Joey and Scout. Last Saturday we set out for Shawnee National Forest with our riding buddies, Jim & Karen and Deb and their three horses.

This was my first vacation since I started real estate five years ago, that I actually did relax. Usually, I would sit and worry that I was letting someone down or I wasn’t there for them but now I have an incredible assistant at home who was my eyes and ears. Other than texting occasionally, I all out enjoyed my vacation.

In fact, while visiting a local tack store (that’s what us horse people do when it rains on vacation-we go to tack stores) I found a decal that speaks the very essence of my belief in life. “Life is a journey, enjoy the ride.” It really got me to thinking about how much this week was a lot like life.

If you have ever ridden a horse in the Shawnee National Forest you know that it is some of the most beautiful riding to be found. At the same time, it can be a little treacherous and isn’t for the novice rider.  What we encountered out on the trail had many parallels to life.

There are some average hills and then some really big hills. Don’t we all have those times in life when we are climbing a mountain? Then there were times where we had to navigate some really rough rocky terrain. There were times we wondered if we should go back. Do you ever wish in life you could have a redo? But if you persisted with patience and let your horse pick his way, things ended up pretty good. Did you ever notice that if we would let The Almighty guide us through the rough times, we would be much better off instead of thinking we know the correct steps to take?

Another obstacle we had to get through was the mud. Just like life, all the paths were not muddy but when they were, they could suck you in and bring your  horse to its knees.  We could have chosen not to go riding because there were muck holes.  What we did was to go out anyway, work our way through the “sticky” parts and enjoy the rest of the incredibly, gorgeous beauty of the forest? What we saw were rock formations and waterfalls and babbling brooks straight off a Hallmark card.  Do you allow life to suck you in so you can't see the many beautiful facets of it?

In addition to navigating all the rocks, mud and briers, we also had to figure out where we were?  There were miles and miles of trails out there. Where are you in life—what are your expectations?  Have you designed a map? If you don’t know what you want or where you want to go, how are you going to get there? There were times when we had to decide which path to take to get us to our destination. There were times we didn't choose the right path and we didn't get to the destination we had in mind.  But we usually found ourselves in yet another area of the forest that had something for us to see.  Do you accept that fact that you will make wrong turns but that you need to find something in the moment to enjoy anyway? Sometimes the path we have chosen is not the one HE has chosen for us?

I was in luck because I was with people who are not directionally impaired.  In the middle of a forest it is easy to get lost.  I was the follower for this trail ride—unless you count the times I just gave my horse his head. He always gets us home.    Do you know when to lead and when to follow? We are all weak at some point, but if we have our friends and family to support us, we will all get through--God will get us through. 

At one point we were told we could take a short cut to get back to camp sooner. Well that right there was a big life lesson. It doesn’t always pay to take the short-cut. What we found was a trail that was not maintained. We got seriously scratched up by briers. Jim looked as though he had been through a war—his entire arm was covered in blood. I had been right behind him and he tried to protect me from the briers. Once we realized we were in trouble we had to decide if we should go back or deal with where we were at and make the best of it. If we were half way, should we just keep going?

We chose to keep going but abandoned the trail and found it pretty easy to ride through the forest instead of the bramble. You know that old saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees”? In this case it should have been, you can’t see the forest for the bramble”. But the point here is we all make mistakes. Admit you are human and do the best you can to correct your mistakes and apologize.

One of the very coolest things we did was to ride through One Horse Gap. It was a crack between two huge formations that you could ride one horse through . . .literally. The walls on each side were about 15 feet. In order to get through we had to pull our feet out of the stirrups to get through. It was one of the rockiest paths we had to take to get to it but it was one of the coolest things we did. If that isn’t the way life is than I don’t know what is!

As I have said the riding was beautiful. It was easy to gaze around in wonder only to find yourself starring over a cliff—and I mean a cliff—as in 15 stories down. But what you saw when you carefully looked down was just incredible. Sometimes you just need to take a chance because you never know what may be around the bend or just over the hill. If you proceed with caution, it may very well be worth it!

Every night and afternoon we would all make it back to camp to do a tick check. The ticks were horrendous. We all said the state animal is the tick and the poison ivy was the state plant. But every morning we would get up at dawn and do the whole thing over again. Were we nuts? Are some of you wondering why in the heck we CHOSE to do this for our vacation?

Collectively, as a group we have been told a child would die and didn't, that both of our children were gravely ill and could die and didn't, we have dealt with bi-polar disorder, loosing a parent & caring for the one left, divorce, lupus and this list goes on. As I write this one of our group was not with us because of a broken pelvis and broken ribs. What we have figured out is that  if you put your energies into the negative, you could possibly loose your mind.

But if you choose to look at the good part of the trail . . . . . . Indian Kitchen with its pool of beautiful water, or Owl’s Bluff where you can see for miles, or Stone House where you can walk in a cool cave, or Natural Bridge where you can walk under tons of rock, the Gap, or the old cemetery with markers dating back to the 1800’s or Garden of the God’s where all you could do was stand in awe.   If we wouldn’t have went through the mud, and the rocks, and the briers, we wouldn’t have seen that child survive, or the children get better, get married, had our first grand child be born, or cried as our daughter graduated from high school, or watched our son run in his first track meet with titanium rods in his back. And we would not have had the fellowship of some pretty incredible people! 

As I am writing this post and putting in the tags, something dawns on me.  Do you realize the word trails and the word trials both have the same letters and only two letters are switched.  I guess you could look at life as filled with trails or filled with trials.  The order you put the letters is up to you!!

“Life is a journey, enjoy the ride!”

 

The Horse Girl ~~ Tami Vroma

www.LiveInWestMI.com

 

This post was written driving back from vacation last summer.  I knew I didn't understand Active Rain and I wanted to wait to post it because I felt it was something special!  I wanted to be able to do it right!  I think I can now!

**There is suppose to be a frame here with more pics- I'll fix it when I get back from church**

.......I probably wouldn't do it. But I don't want to run into her in a dark bar in New York during Real Estate Connect and have to explain why I ignored her meme. If you've never seen Teresa in a dark bar in NY, lucky you........haha.

She also asked that we immediately ban all future meme's from ActiveRain. I am seriously considering it (again, the whole dark bar and running into Teresa thing again).

So the rules of this meme:

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 56
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences
5. Dont dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the Closest.
6. Tag five people to do the same

**The one book that this can not be is the Bible**

I have been flying more than normal lately. Jon always gives us books to read. If Seth Godin has a new book out, you can be assured it will show up on my desk from the book fairy with a request that I read it. So the combo of lots of flying and book reading assignments make for a great pair. So when I got this email from Teresa saying I was tagged, I leaned over and opened the zipper on my bag and out pops a little Seth Godin book, Tribes.

There is another (WOW, I have no idea how I was going to finish that sentence. I just got off a 30 minute phone call with a person that we suspended for copyright violation. I don't know how many times I have to say the same thing over and over to get the message through. I must have tried to say the same thing ten different ways. I am seriously patting myself on the back for keeping my cool......very frustrating.)

Let me start over........

There is another book in my bag, but it was buried a little deeper, so Tribes was the first one I saw. I normally read historical fiction books for relaxing and 'The Alexandria Link' by Steve Berry was just underneath. Great book but like about ten other books on my shelf right now, I haven't actually finished it. Two hour plane rides never allow me to finish the whole book and I always forget them on the next trip. The airport book store LOVES ME! Ok so Page 56 then......fifth sentence......Tribes:

"First, they're not going to do the local leadership required when tribe members interact. They're going to be so busy following the playbook that they'll hesitate about engaging in the interactions that make a tight tribe such a vibrant organization. People don't engage merely to remind on another of the status quo. Instead they eagerly engage when they want something to improve. This microleadership is essential to the health of your organization."

So there you have it. I am 99.999999999% (maybe even higher) sure that Seth Godin would not try to come after me if I posted a picture of the cover of his book, (in fact, he would probably welcome it) but with all the crap I am dealing with around copyright and trademark violations, I am just not going to post a picture, short of Seth himself stopping by and saying it's ok. (Believe it or not, my blog was recently audited by a member who I was dealing with regarding copyright violations and she went through EVERY post I have ever written to make sure my blog didn't have copyrighted or trademarked images........I had to erase one post that was questionable.)

In the spirit of outlawing meme's on ActiveRain, I am not going to tag anyone further. Is that a fair enough trade-off Teresa?

(This one is long, but you may be glad you read the whole thing)

Over the next couple of months, I will be embarking on a project here at ActiveRain. Some of my time will be spent helping introduce our network, and the real estate industry to a new product. When Jon first approached me about doing this, my first response was...."I am not going to push a product on our members that sucks" (I'm pretty forward with Jon, I may have used a more choice word than "sucks"). Jon also reminded me that I'm not pushing it, I'm simply putting it in our members hands and asking for open and honest feedback.

I've been through Growth Leader and ladies and Gentlemen, it doesn't suck. In fact, just the opposite. It's very powerful.

So what is Growth Leader? (Here's the official version, I'll give you my version in the next paragraphs)

Growth Leader enables real estate agents seeking a competitive edge to generate a steady stream of prospects, and provides them with a powerful contact management solution that helps convert these prospects into clients.

• Integrated response-generating website that is search engine optimized with direct MLS integration.
• Powerful combination of TV, search engine & other real estate advertising to help you attract prospects looking for homes and real estate info in your area.
• Industry leading contact management solution with lead notification, automated follow-up, email, mobile access.
• Prospect monitoring tools that allow you to know what your prospects are thinking every step of the process, showing which ones are most active: how often they visit and which properties, prices and neighborhoods they're interested in.

Sounds like the next best thing since sliced bread, right? Well as Brian Brady would say, there is no 'magic purple pill', but Growth Leader is a powerful way to generate prospects and convert them to clients, and that folks, is the name of the game.

Growth leader has two parts. The first part is the integrated website and contact management solution called Vision. The second part is an advertising component that drives traffic to your site. Depending on your market, the cost of driving traffic will vary, but the traffic is exclusive to you and you control how much traffic you want your site to get.

Vision is powerful. The corporate speak above is not B.S.. The back-end monitoring of your prospect's and client's behavior gives you great insight into where they are at in the process. Every agent should have something like this on the back end of their home search site.

OK, enough about the product for right now, just believe me that it's great.......why would you believe me? Because Market Leader is going to let selected members demo the product in exchange for their feedback on the product.

This is where I come in. I'll be selecting and working with many of our members over the next 6 months and engaging them to use the product, give feedback, help develop best practices and CLOSE TRANSACTIONS (remember folks, that's the name of the game).

We have started the project and are in the beginning stages. Some members are up and running and some are in the provisioning stage getting ready to start. I want to get this product in the hands of members who will use it and implement it in their business plan, this will be the first criteria when selecting participants. I also want it in the hands of people who are going to write about it so that the word spreads. In order to achieve this, I will be selecting members that have consistently blogged on our network for an extended period of time. Since we are asking participants to write about the product once a week, I need to know that the members testing it are dedicated bloggers. A third component will be how many subscribers a member has. If all you do is blog about your listings and no one ever reads, sorry, but that isn't going to help spread the word.

Right now it's available in about 25 markets. There will be more coming and when they launch, I'll update this post. If you are interested in participating, please see if your market is below and leave a comment or respond to me directly via email (bob at activerain dot com). I will apologize in advance, because not everyone will be able to participate. If you are selected, I will send you additional information about what you will agree to do for me in order to get your hands on this great product for free for a few months.

Markets:

• Miami, FL - Southeast FL Regional MLS and Miami-Dade
  
• Phoenix, AZ - ARMLS
  
• Tallahassee, FL - Tallahassee Area MLS
  
• Atlanta, GA - Georgia MLS
  
• Boston, MA - MLS PIN (aka Bay State MLS)
  
• Houston, TX - Houston Assoc. of Realtors
  
• Portland, OR - RMLS
  
• San Diego, CA - Sandicor MLS
  
• Tampa, FL - Mid-Florida Regional
  
• Dallas, TX - North Texas R.E. Info Sys
  
• Jacksonville, FL - NE Florida MLS
  
• Orlando, FL - Mid-Florida Regional MLS
  
• Washington, DC - MRIS
  
• Austin, TX - ACTRIS - Austin BOR
  
• Fort Meyers, FL - Punta Gorda MLS (Now Mid-Florida MLS)
  
• Los Angeles, CA - Southern California MLS and Multi-Regional MLS
  
• Seattle, WA - NWMLS
  
• West Palm Beach, FL - RMLS Florida Regional
  
• Baltimore, MD - MRIS
  
• Chicago, IL - Midwest Real Estate Data

Please note that just because your specific city doesn't show up, doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to participate. If your MLS is represented, there's a pretty good chance you will be able to participate. Also, if your market is there, but you use a different MLS, contact me directly as there are some additional MLS's coming on board.

Make sure to check the box to receive updates if you comment as I will update the markets on this post as they come online and you will be notified that I have updated the post.

(this button below will direct you to a Market Leader Account Rep, not raise your hand to show interest in our marketing program)

 

 

 

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Katerina first brought this up to me way back in January. She (and many others, but she was first) offered to help coordinate things so that it was certain we would have the opportunity to have an ActiveRain party gathering. In typical fashion, Jon and I dragged our feet on getting everything set up. Katerina was relentless (bless her heart) in making sure we got everything in order. She succeeded!!

Katerina first let the cat out of the bag in her blog on Oct. 23rd. Only she didn't let the whole cat out.......

We will be hosting an ActiveRain gathering. The gathering will be this Saturday, November 8th from 8pm-12am. Where you ask? We'll that's the tail of the cat still stuck in the bag.

In true social media fashion, you are going to have to tune in and catch the word the day of the party. On Saturday morning we will start spreading word of the location across the internet. We'll certainly use ActiveRain (most likely in the form of a comment here and on Katerina's post). We will also be using Twitter and Facebook.

(Brad Andersohn is our resident expert on Social Media. He belongs to more sites then just about anyone I know. The list of places Brad will be dropping the word will probably be longer than I would EVER care to type)

So if you will be in Orlando attending the NAR convention and you would like to come join us for the ActiveRain party gathering, make sure you get yourself hooked in somehow (at the very least, find a friend who knows how to hook in and get the word from them). I have attended a number of these parties gatherings and they are a BLAST! The thing that always amazes me about them is how it feels like a party gathering with a bunch of old friends. I never cease to be amazed when it's hugs not handshakes that are being exchanged by our members. It's a true testament to the power of ActiveRain in creating real-life, meaningful friendships.

• Plane Ticket to Orlando: $500
• Hotel Room for three nights: $276
• Bar tab: (sorry, I can't disclose this number)
• Getting to meet the people inside your computer: Priceless!!
  

You can find us on Twitter:

• Bob Stewart is @activebob
• Rich Jacobson is @activerich,
• Brad Andersohn is @bradandersohn,
• Jon Washburn is @jonwashburn
• Jeff Corbett is @jeffx.
• Katerina's is @CoachKaterina.

I don't know how you find us on Facebook but people are finding me every day and I'll bet you are just as capable as they are. Search our name and ActiveRain would be my best guess.

We have room for about 400 people and if we exceed that number.......well then it's going to be one rocking party gathering. We are really looking forward to meeting so many of you and getting the chance to reconnect with others. oh yeah.......one last thing. We are going to be there on Thursday night. On Friday and Saturday our team is going to be out and about in the convention center.......and we'll be packing ActiveRain T-shirts to give away. Make sure you figure out how to find us so you can get that free shirt, it'll serve (hint hint) you well at the Party!

 

What a day yesterday was......long lines, some rough weather, yet many stood the course so they could vote their conscience.....I applaud everyone of you.

Letting your voice be heard is one of the many difference's that make the United State's of America the greatest country on earth.

Both Sen. McCain and President-elect Obamaspoke eloquently, and to the heart of ALL American's.....and that should let us all know that we are in for some much needed changes and direction.

God Bless both these men and us all.

   

The Dan Brudnok - John McGovern Team
We appreciate your referrals!!!!!!!

Keller Williams Real Estate
Dan - direct @ 610-256-7258
John - direct @ 610-331-9964
Office - main @ 610-363-4300

Click here for the most up to date Real Estate market conditions where you live......

Search the 7 County Philadelphia market for homes for sale at:www.DanBrudnok.com