You know, I like to think I stay on the leading, if not the bleeding, edge of changes in technology in my industry.  I have had a pretty active practice on the internet for 6 or 7 years, doing things that many of my colleagues are just now catching on to.  I have used pay-per-click marketing for about 6 years, and trackable e-flyers for marketing to other brokers, and I've of course had my own personal website, and more recently have added a texting "brochure box" to my listings, and I am in the process of rolling out QR code marketing.  I use virtual tours and dabble in video, with my own youtube channel.  Of course I am on ActiveRain and Facebook and Twitter, although I admit to being a slacker when it comes to consistent blogging.  I am skilled in the use of our county's website, for things like tax records, deeds, and GIS mapping.  I use an Ipad for my listing presentation and Docusign for fast execution of documents.

But today I woke up and realized there is one area where technology trumps me every time.  And, I am reminded of it twice a year.  Today is the last day for 6 months that I have to mentally adjust the time on my clock radio when I wake up in the night, or before I get out of bed.  This morning the radio said it was 5:20, and my foggy waking brain did the calculation, adding an hour to correct the reading to Daylight Savings Time.  Ok, I admit, when I do something "technological" ONCE and then don't do it again for 6 months, the odds are I am going to have to relearn the process.  And when the manual for that particular piece of technology is long gone, well, it seems the simplest thing to do is not do it.  So when I wake up at night, and every morning since last spring I have practiced my daylight savings ritual of adjusting the time in my mind to keep me on schedule with the world.  So besides an extra hour of sleep tonight, tomorrow I don't have to start my day with a mental calculation!  Of course I have to remind myself to not do the calculation, which is probably just as taxing, but in a few days I will have adjusted to Standard Time.

I know they make clocks that do it all for you, and maybe when this one bites the dust, I go that route, but for now, this particular technology can continue to beat me. But this one also is a docking station, charger and speakers for my Ipod, so I'll put up with it, and the mental math for as long as it lasts. (don't tell me the manual is downloadable on-line--I still would have to relearn the process twice a year--not gonna happen!)

Fall back everybody! Happy return to Standard Time.

 Wow, what a gorgeous day for tennis.  On this past Friday, I got to fulfill my role as spectator at the USTA North Carolina Super Seniors State Championships in Pinehurst.  Over seventy Super Senior teams from around the state gathered in Pinehurst to determine the best of the best in geezer tennis. The event got underway on Friday and matches were scheduled throughout the weekend.  I showed up part-way into the eleven o'clock match, the first that my boyfriend was scheduled to play.  Temps were hovering at the 60 degree mark, the sun was dazzling, the sky crystal clear and Carolina blue. A breeze kept it fairly interesting and teams representing the best of North Carolina's Super Seniors served up exciting tennis for the scattered on-lookers. Win or lose, it's always fun to watch quality tennis, and it was available everywhere.

 As it turns out, a gorgeous weekend for chasing fuzzy yellow balls provided excitement, drama, the thrill of victory and the agony of flexing aging joints in 35 degree temperatures.  The action continued through the weekend, as Super Senior State Champion teams, who had gathered in Pinehurst from all over the state, played their hearts out through Sunday morning, with winners of the round robin play scheduled to finish up their group play in order to qualify for Sunday's Super Senior finals.

 Court assignments in hand, they headed out to tennis centers all over town for the first day of Super Senior round-robin play.  While matches were happening at five sites around the area, all of the remaining matches for my boyfriend's team were held at the Pinehurst Resort and Country Club tennis center, with their gazillion clay courts and buffet barbeque among the pine needles.

 My boyfriend's regular Raleigh team didn't make the North Carolina Super Senior State Championships, so he claims his waiver status got him picked up by the Pinehurst team.  In actual fact, he plays with a group of Pinehurst guys often, as he spends most weekends with me in Whispering Pines, and when his regular Super Senior team finished the season out of the finals, he made a phone call. He ended up playing three matches and the team had a great time! (That's code for "didn't win.")

 The North Carolina Super Senior State Championships has become a much anticipated event for the Super Senior players across the state and appears to have found a home in Pinehurst, with its abundant clay courts, great restaurants, and as it turns out, near perfect fall weather.

This really is THAT important today--I know I have been guilty in the past of schmoozing the seller instead of telling him/her like it absolutely MUST BE.

In my email this morning was an email, ostensibly from one of my clients, from HIS hotmail address asking me to wire him $2500 because he was stranded in London and had lost his wallet.  It was obvious his email account been hijacked so I called him immediately and apparently was not the first to call. He cannot get into his hotmail mailbox.  Wow, I guess I would get rid of hotmail if that was my email, but I guess it could happen to any provider.  I tried to cut and paste the email content here but couldn't make that work.  Just a word to the wise, another phishing scam coming to an email box near you.

I just couldn't resist changing my picture, and after I searched my newly replaced hard drive for my professional picture, I couldn't find a copy of it large enough for the system to accept. The next best choice was on a CD that my son gave me for Christmas one year.  Among the baby pictures and pictures of his college graduation was the one I upload for that great point bonus.  It is a picture taken in about July of 1969, when I was a stewardess (before the days of PC and flight attendants). We had a New York layover and my parents came from Cleveland to spend a few days in NY with me.  This is my dad and I, and I was leaving for our flight, so am in uniform.  My dad is gone now, died at 90, 2 and a half years ago, and was just as handsome the day he died.

And I CAN'T BELIEVE I was ever that skinny!

Thanks for the opportunity to step back in time for a moment.  I think I will leave the picture up for a time--be one of those brokers who uses their college photo in their advertising!

A small group of us in our office got together and bought a Previsite camera (with an incredible fisheye lens) and each of have subscribed to the Previsite service. (www.previsite.com, check it out!) These has to be the most remarkably easy virtue tour to create on the web.  I took the camera one day and shot some pictures of Pinehurst Resort, a few of the clubhouse, inside and out, the wonderful Payne Stewart statue on the 18th green, the Carolina Hotel etc.  Take a look at my little Pinehurst tour at the link below.  One of the very cool things about this program and the fisheye pics is you can grab them and move them around, (looking at magnificent coffered ceilings, exquisite hardwood or marble floors for instance.)There is a picture in the tour below of a hedge--be sure and grab that one and move it up and down.  The picture was a mistake but I left it in for this little exercise.

http://tour.previsite.com/D02C8553-9630-9A4F-84CD-DF90D00778D9

You may think this doesn't have anything to do with real estate (but I am sure all you savvy activerainers know that it does) but I witnessed THE MOST BLATANT example of someone needing customer service training I have ever seen yesterday at a Durham Bulls baseball game.  I was there as a guest of a big family outing.  A group had invited their membership, their significant others, their spouses and their children to come and enjoy an evening at the ball park.  They had a buffet cookout at the Miller Lite tent in left field and our seats were "anywhere in two sections", lower and upper, at the extreme left field end of the park.  Many members of the group arrived early.  Some chose to get their stadium seats first and then get food, others were more interested in eating than in where they sat.  One family of four in particular had settled themselves in four seats in the front row and then gone to get food.  As we got closer to game time, the sections that we were told were ours exclusively filled up with members of the group. Sometime around maybe the second inning, a couple showed up with actual tickets for two of that family's four seats.

They were not part of the group--someone had given them their season tickets and, not unreasonably, they wanted to sit in their seats.  And likewise not unreasonably, the family that got there early and was told by Durham Bulls Athletic Park officials that they could sit "anywhere in these two sections" was justifyably annoyed that nobody had said "anywhere but these two seats, which have actually been leased for the season to someone else," (oh, it really is about real estate), in time for them to simply sit in the four front row seats that were available at the time they sat down. 

A woman, a park official person, was summoned by the couple who wanted their seats and she came and simply told those people, a husband, wife and two kids, who, until moments before happily enjoying a minor league ball game up close and personal (you can reach out and touch the opposing team's pitchers, warming up in what serves as a bull pen from those seats) that they had to move and they could sit anywhere in the (now nearly full) section.  I never heard her say anything resembling an apology. She just turned and waved her arm in the direction of the sections and said "you can sit anywhere in these two sections."  Bear in mind that by now, there probably weren't 4 seats together in the sections and in order to watch the game, the family was likely going to have to separate.  She never said "I am sorry, we screwed up and how can we make it right for you?" She never said to the couple with the tickets, "I am sorry, we screwed up, why don't I find you two better seats?" She simply told the members of our group "you can sit anywhere in these two sections but here."

The father was annoyed enough to say they were going home (likely NEVER to return). They were made to feel as you might if you had poached someone's seats, snuck into them illegally, and the owner of the seats showed up. rather than sat in seats your were told were yours at the beginning of the evening.

I could think of a thousand ways it could have been handled better, but not one way it could have been handled worse!

Time for a little customer service and sensitivity training at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

How's your customer service IQ? I know none of you would ever do something intentionally to make a client or customer feel like they had poached seats in a ball park, but are you paying attention to how the things you do and say make you clients, customers and colleagues feel?  Just a demonstration that made me sit up and take notice.  Customer service takes constant awareness.

Ya know, sometimes we just need a good laugh or two in this crazy business.  My son, Gen Y that he is, is always finding and sharing great links on the web.  More often than not they have nothing to do with real estate, like this one http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf but every once in a while a real estate nugget shows up.

Do you know about LOLCats?  www.Icanhascheeseburger.com?  well this is sort of a cheeseburger site for real estate listing photos: www.lovelylisting.com

I stop by every once in a while, when I have time to waste or really just need a good laugh or two.  I blogged about the ad with a picture of alf on the phone a couple of weeks ago--that was from this site.  hope you enjoy.

Interest rates and declining prices are combining to create among the most affordable opportunities in 30 years.

Only 5 months since 1970 have seen affordability levels higher.  Combine that near record affordability with the $8000 tax credit for first time home buyers and it is time to rock!  But with the tax credit expiring at the end of November and new regulations concerning appraisals and good faith estimates making 30 day closings a thing of the past, anyone wishing to take advantage of this great combination of circumstances needs to plan on being under contract by early October, mid-October at the latest.

Beautiful lakefront location, adorable, neat as a pin, with absolutely the best views of Pine Lake. Split level ranch with fireplace, hardwoods, ADT securitysystem, many updates, attic fan, master bedroom w/deck. Patio and park-like back yard with dock. Recent price reduction to $300,000 makes this a great lakefront value.

4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, nearly 2000 square feet, dock and gorgeous lake view