It is easy to lose sight of things you enjoy about your job when the pressure for success is continuous while the opportunity for success rarely pays a visit. 

I got into real estate after a technology sales career of over twenty five years because I wanted to get back to those days when the right solution really made a difference in what people were doing.  In the early days of computing, the right computer loaded with the proper tools could let people do what they could not do before.

I saw real estate in a similar light.  Often people moving seek to change their lives for the better.  I have seen people coming to our area looking to a new home as base for doing things that they could not do before.  My own experience taught me that a warm coastal climate could make the out of doors a much bigger part of your life.

Still moving a problem from one location to another will rarely fix it, so part of the job of a Realtor® is to help a client move from the limitless possibilities that might at first appear when looking to move to the realities of an actual move.

As much as I talk about the great coastal climate, it is not a place where you can set the thermostat and the outdoor temperature will respond.  We have hot weather and some almost cold weather.  A lot depends on your perspective.  I try to help people have that perspective.

Yes we have lots of water for boating, but you also have to understand that boating along the shallow waters of the NC coast is not the same as boating in a deep water lake where you can go anywhere you want.

I think we all know there is no perfect home, but there are likely a number of homes that will do perfectly well if people approach them in the right frame of mind.  There are always tradeoffs.

When we got our last home, my wife really wanted a backyard.  In fact she has wanted a backyard for the last three homes.  We ended up settling for a home with a dock as the back yard, but I am positive that is not what she had in mind.  She has adjusted, and to me, it is just less to mow.

Even with all the technology available to us, it is hard for people to really get the feel for an area without getting in a car and riding with you.  That narrative you spin of the area, its features and even some things you hope will change for the better is a key part of helping clients make informed decisions and moves with their eyes open.

I just wrote a piece on Apple's iPhone and my thoughts are to why it might or might become an indispensable part of my job. In writing the article, it occured to me that I can get a little carried away with what technology might do just as someone might think they are moving to an area where the weather will always be perfect.

Somewhere between what we dare to dream and what we have already realized is the place where happiness can be found if you keep your eyes and mind open to it.

We had a great Memorial Day at the beach, and I had happy to report that things are back to normal with a weekend of stellar weather for those fortunate enough to be on the shore.

We all have some funny stories about the web.  One of my favorites is the call that I got from a lady who wanted to know why a listed house was only $79,000. 

The listing was out of our normal area so I had to pull it from MLS.  I had to chuckle when I saw the screen.  An agent had posted the picture of a clubhouse as the MLS picture for a lot.  While the listing was clear that it was a lot, the picture caused some confusion.  The caller had not taken the time to read the listing, they had only looked at the picture and the price.

The good news was that I had gotten a call, the bad news was that it was practically worthless.  The potential buyer was only interested in houses under $100,000.  Those are in short supply in our area.

A lot of marketing is all about touching a lot of people who are not interested in your product before you get to someone who is.  That holds the same for print based media and Internet based advertising.  The good news about Internet marketing is that there are some tools that can touch a lot of people without costing a lot as long as you do it yourself.

For a long time, I have used both Flickr and Picasa webalbums to attract people to my websites and to provide images which will attract people looking to live in our area of great scenic beauty.

As web streaming technology has improved along with camera technology, it has become relatively easy to use the web for stunning slide shows and very interesting virtual tours. I recently wrote a post on my Applepeels site about how Apple application intergration made it very easy for me to produce a slide show and add video to the slides to make it a good YouTube virtual tour.

With all of this I was able to enhance a pre-listing post that I had on the Crystal Coast's electronic village.  The electronic village site does an automatic feed to Twitter.

My job prior to real estate was all about measuring web traffic so I am not a stranger to the challenge of figuring out whether what you have done is working or not.  It is especially difficult when most standard methods are also having a hard time demonstrating value.

While higher viewing numbers are no guarantee of success, at least they help eliminate efforts which are producing little.  I am still a believer in casting a wide net on the web much like a spider.  The more entry points into my world of websites the better opportunity I have at least making contact with people who are interested in our area and potentially buying homes.

I still believe we are in the infancy of effective use of the web for reaching buyers and helping sellers make the best use of the web.

There are a lot of tools already available.  The mix that works in a self contained market area might be different than what works in an area like ours which often deals with retirees moving in from long distances.

There is no question in my mind that the next wave of buyers will turn more and more to the Internet.  I am pleased with the options available in our area for agents.

Two years ago, talk of a company real estate blog was just talk.  Today we have a blog in place where potential buyers can get a taste of the area from articles like this one. Peace on the beach.

Blogs, slideshows, maps, and video provide buyers with more information than ever.  You can find out more about an area today without leaving your kitchen than you might have found out in the first day visiting an area a few years ago.

If you combine the web with a visit, and a meeting with a local real estate agent, most buyers should have what they need to decide if an area meets their needs.

There are people out there that still doubt the power of the Internet to connect people. That does not surprise me any more than a connection between people can come from an Internet pimento cheese recipe, but more on that in a minute.

I still see agents who believe that the only place on the Internet where they need a presence is Realtor.com.  We are rapidly moving towards a society where many initial contacts will only happen on the Internet. If I measured the number of contacts that I have from covering the real estate duty desk against those that I have received from writing and having an Internet presence, it would be no contest as to where I would focus my time.

I would give up the duty desk and spend all of my time writing. However, I stay on the duty desk because calls from signs have become a second important source of leads. However, they are well behind the Internet in total numbers for me.

My pimento cheese lead is a good way to show the power of the Internet and to illustrate that you meet people on the Internet through just as many different ways as you do in real life.

If you do a Google search for "Classic southern pimento cheese" my recipe has the number two spot on Google.  Recently I got a note from someone several states away thanking me for my pimento cheeese recipe.  As I always do, I sent back a note thanking the person for his comments.  My email signature block has a link to my Crystal Coast website.  

Either from that site or from my blog where the recipe was posted, the person who commented picked up that I might be a Realtor®.  Soon I had a couple of more emails and some questions about our area.  My potential client is now busily reading posts about our area and deciding whether or not to visit. He and his wife happen to be looking for a new place to live.

I am certain that he is spending some time figuring out if I am a reliable source of information.  I actually encourage people to do that.  I even wrote a post, How to review the reviewer, on that subject.

In the end the point to take away is that just as recipe exchanged at a church function might lead to someone making the effort to get to know you better, so also can a recipe on the Internet.

If you are ignoring the Internet as a way to make contact with people, you are making a mistake.  If you are a buyer looking for a home, you probably already know that the Internet is a good way to find out information about homes.  It is also a good way to find out information about Realtors®.  You should take advantage of it.

If you are a Realtor® and looking for my advice on where to start as a local expert on something other than real estate, check out this post.

Monday night I got a call from someone whose area in South Dakota was in the midst of being whacked by a blizzard.  I guess it was the last straw for him.  He was ready to start investigating a move the Southern Outer Banks or SOBX as it is locally known.  Actually the blizzard was not the real reason for wanting to move, but I covered that in a post on the Crystal Coast Living blog.

His call had come just hours after an email from a potential mountain dwelling client who is already scheduled to visit our area this summer.  The same blizzard had just dumped over two feet of snow on her Montana doorstep.  She was desperate for a picture of anything that was not white.  I sent her a link to some spring flower pictures that I took this weekend.

While I know a few folks who love to be snowed in, most are past that when April is on the horizon.

I can certainly appreciate what our friends in the northern plains are enduring right now.  My wife and I lived in Canada for sixteen years.  For over ten of those years, we lived on a farm in a tiny settlement about twenty miles north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. 

We were in a snowbelt, and I was the farmer with the largest tractor along a tough stretch of road.  Many snowy nights someone would knock on our door and asked to be pulled out of the ditch.  When living on the farm, helping your neighbors is just a way of life even if it means putting on a snow suit late at night and rescuing someone who had no business being out on the road.

I never really felt threatened by a blizzard, but we were living in Canada where they would not even bother plowing the roads unless it snowed more than six inches.  We heated with wood and our water was spring fed.  On top of that, it was so cold we could just unplug our freezers for a couple of months in the winter.

Still I can feel sorry for folks who are accidently trapped out in a blizzard.  I am sure it happens, but even twenty five years ago on the farm, we had a pretty good idea when a big blow was on the horizon.

Still most people ride out blizzards with little interruption to their daily lives.  You take a day or two off, drink some hot chocolate, and sit around the fire.  Farmers are among those who do not get the day off.  A big blizzard meant hours of snow blowing before I could reach our cattle herd and give them their daily feed.  We had storms that dumped over three feet on us at a time, and temperatures as cold as minus forty. Still I managed to make the trip out with a big round bale each day.  Fortunately we never had a bad blizzard during calving season.

The seasons have turned, and we are a long way from blizzards here on the Carolina Coast.  We did see some snow this year, but it did not even stick to the driveways so my Canadian heritage allowed me to almost ignore it.

When people in blizzards start calling for a warmer place to live, I usually get found through the Internet.  One of the things that I do to help make sure that I come up in searches is to do some searches myself and see where I rank.  There are often lessons to be learned when you do a search and find someone ranked ahead of you.

I will often look at the page source of a page which is ahead of me.  Sometimes I will actually create a new webpage to go head to head with one that is particularly troubling.  One of the things that I learned long ago is that you cannot expect one webpage to win all the battles.

It helps to have webpages which are customized to certain search terms.  I do really well in Google searches on "SOBX real estate" but not as well on searches for "Cape Carteret real estate."

Today I created a new website to help fix that problem.  It is focused on Cape Carteret real estate and has URLs and keywords built to help move me up in the rankings.

While the Internet continues to lead in bringing in long distance customers, it seems that good old fashioned signs are still most effective in pulling in listings.  I was happy to pick up a nice reasonably priced waterview cottage and a well priced family home in a quiet but convenient neighborhood in the Cape Carteret area.

Now that I think about it, I wish today's real estate market could just be a blizzard that I waited out around the fireplace.  Unfortunately it is not going to be that easy.

It has been an amazing few weeks in American.  Barack Obama is president, Steve Jobs has stepped aside at Apple, my Vista computer has hardly misbehaved, and it snowed at the beach.  On top of that I have taken two phone calls on desk duty.  One is leading to what looks like a sale, and the other might well develop into something.

As I took this picture of the water behind our home in Bluewater Cove this morning, I wondered if there were any fish swimming beneath the surface this time of year.

Earlier in the week when we had some ice, there were some Mergansers swimming around the the same water.  It is a popullar notion that the Mergansers, a diving duck, does a real number on fish populations.  I am pretty sure the ducks have much less of an impact than the gill nets in the White Oak River.

I was also thinking about how clear the water has remained in spite of some significant percipitation in recent weeks.  I was reminded that at one time this fish nursery behind our home was filled with mud. Because of conservation efforts in the last few years, our water is often very clear.

That makes fishing a great challenge in shallow waters which pretty describes most of the White Oak.  Sometimes you are very aware of the brown tint to the water.  Other times all you can see is blue water because of the brilliant blue skies that we get.  I am just happy the water is clean and clear.  I love both colors.

All this got me to thinking about real estate in the next year. Trying to look forward is like trying to read deep and dark waters.

Much of what I could think about real estate comes from what I hear from my colleagues, all of whom are facing some challenges.  Just as the ducks have an impact on the fish, I am sure that as my colleagues believe the headlines about foreclosures have an impact on buyers.  I suspect that the needs and limitations of the real estate buying population are more important. In spite of a lot of priming of the money pumps at the banks, I have not seen much change in real estate buyers. 

What is really happening remains something of a mystery played out in thousands of different locales.

My guess is that like most news, we will not find out the story on 2009 real estate until after the trends are well underway.

In our piece of Coastal NC the real estate market, while showing some signs of life, remains relatively quiet.  There are plenty of challenges.  The worsening job market is certainly a larger factor today than it was a year ago.

In the end for me personally, it all comes down to this.  Listening to doom and gloom is as easy as stopping to chat with someone who has not sold anything in a couple of months.  While I can be supportive of other agents facing challenges, I cannot let those conversations define the conversations that I have with the me that keeps me going.

I have to look on the positive side of every situation. The only person that can keep me pumped up and moving forward is me.

With an enumeration of what is headed in the right direction for me, I can keep myself headed in that right direction.

I look at the two properties that I have already sold this year as an indication that 2009 will be better than 2008.

While some have lessened their efforts during the slump, I have continued to increase, enhance, and refine my web presence.  There are enough results coming in for me to know that the strategy is working.

My standard marketing efforts have also stayed strong. That includes mailings and strategically placed brochures .  Next week I hope to roll out a co-promotion with a popular local restaurant.

I am very pleased with the quality of the content that I have been able to deliver for the Crystal Coast Living Blog which is featured on our company's real estate home page.  The electronic village for the Crystal Coast that I have worked on with a friend from Virginia Tech has statted to get some traction.  As we refine it in the next year, it will become a great place for potential buyers to find homes and information.

Two of the three small towns in the area are using photos attributed to me, and I am averaging at least two photos per week on the local television station.  I continue to get the comment, "So you are the guy who does all the photos?"

When I put my shoes and smile on in the morning, I know that I am headed in the right direction.  If I do not have a great year, it will not because I did not give it my absolute best effort.  I have promised myself that I will not let myself be talked into a world of doom and gloom.  I am ready to acknowledge the challenges, but I will not let them beat me.

A life in sales prepares you for lots of ups and downs. Since I worked for Apple Computer from 1984 until 2008. I got to see plenty of both.  As I survey the real estate markets I see some parallels to Apple's comeback as a computer manufacturer.

If any company has risen from the dead to great success it would be Apple.

Maybe the comparisons jump out more easily if you are new in the real estate industry like I am.  Perhaps the comparisons do not work for all areas, but certainly in the spot that I know well, Carteret County, NC, there are some interesting parallels.

Fundamentally what brought Apple back were great products.  However, Apple had great products during a long period when business magazines took turns predicting the company's death on the their covers.

One of the keys to Apple selling more computers was for the company's computers to become more competitively priced.

Certainly shedding thirty percent or more in price over the last few years has made our coastal property far more competitively priced.  Today you can get a home on or near the water for prices that people did not think they would see again in their lifetimes.

Another key to Apple's success was the web.  In my early days with Apple, we would get more literature than it was possible to hand out.  Every two or three months, we had to clean our closets of the literature or be overwhelmed.

By the time I left Apple, Apple had completely abandoned paper literature.  If a potential Apple customer wanted information, a sales person could print it out or the customer could access it on the web.

Providing high quality information on the web became a way of life at Apple.  I can remember a PDF file on security that we wanted to distribute to clients taking a year longer to write than the lines of code in the actual operating system that we were describing.

Obviously with real estate we are moving more and more to the Internet being our best source for information.

The next thing I would credit with helping Apple recover would be their retail stores which provide knowledgeable human help to guide people through a process they often started on the web.  Many people are unfamiliar with Apple products other than the Apple ads that they might had seen. The Apple Stores provide needed guidance and trusted advice.

I think the downturn in real estate will drop the number of real estate agents to the point that only the most dedicated and skilled will survive.  When a client walks into our real estate office they will hook up with someone willing to spend whatever time necessary to get the client through the process of buying or selling a home successfully.

The next thing that I would see as similar is that a positive buzz turned Apple into a company whose products were desired.  We are not there yet in real estate with a positive buzz, but we are positioned for that to happen.

First prices have declined while builders and sellers are working hard to deliver great value to attract buyers.  At the same time, other investments such as the stock market have become more risky.  At a certain point real estate is going to get its buzz back.  With property at prices which will eventually return handsome profits, we will have some investors down the road who will be very happy.

I do see some differences between Apple and real estate.  First, Apple came up with the iPod and then the iPhone, both products which attracted many new customers to the Apple Store and eventually to Apple's computers.

At this point we do not have clients coming into our offices, but we will get there, and I think a lot of our success will be driven by having products that do demonstrate great value to our clients.

Not all areas are going to be winners in this respect.

I think our area will continue with relatively low taxes.  I do not see anything that is going to change our mild climate or our wonderful access to the water.  Our growth has been slow and relatively manageable.  We are not swamped by foreclosures, and our supply is gradually being cut back.  Our schools continue to be great, traffic is a non-issue and the variety of services available continues to grow.

I have confidence in our area.  I know it will come back.  I have no hesitation in recommending the area as a second or retirement home area.

Right now we are suffering from a crisis in confidence.  No one is confident what is going to happen tomorrow so most people are frozen.

That will change.  I actually think I have seen a slight improvement in the last week.  One week is not much of a trend, so we will have to wait and see if the trend continues.

In the meantime, I will keep honing the technology I use and the skills that will differentiate me from other agents.

I have a post, What Sales Is Really All About, which pretty well defines my sales philosophy. I am confident that our new electronic village for the Crystal Coast will eventually define a new way to sell real estate.

With the low mortgage rates we are seeing and the poor return on other investments, it is only a matter of time before some investors start searching out real estate deals.

Searching out those deals will be far easier with all the information that is now on the web.  Social networking, lifestyle blogs and area specific blogs will greatly help speed up the process once it gets going.

I plan to be around to for some of the good times just like I was at Apple Computer.

Pictures of our recently very sunny area are availabe at my Picasa Web Albums site.

If you need some peaceful beach sights and sounds to distract you from real estate challenges, try my recent December Beach Day video on YouTube.  If you want to read a little about the technology behind the video, check out my Applepeels post.

At least in our area here on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina, the real estate market is very tough right now for sellers and real estate agents since there are very few buyers.

Every business has tough times, and right now many businesses are seeing some of the worst times in memory.

I had the good fortune to be at Apple Computer for nearly twenty years.  Those years spanned the glory years, the bad years, and the recovery years.

It was a great learning experience. As is often the case, I learned far more during the tough years than I did in the years that things were easier.  I cannot remember any really easy years at Apple.

I did learn that desperation is not a strategy.  I also found out that believing in yourself is the key to any success.

Just this summer I thought we were on our way to a modest recovery.  My business was going nicely, and I had a steady stream of potential clients.  I have worked hard at not only creating an Internet presence but also building my reputation through traditional marketing.  I thought it was working according to plan with the exception of a slower than normal market.

Then the bottom fell out with the financial crisis, and most people have become financially paralyzed.  I recently had a buyer and seller very close on price on a lot.  We ended up with an appraisal that makes no sense mostly because nothing like the property has sold in over a year.  The property was rather unique anyway.  We might still make the deal work with some owner financing, but it will not be easy and the property is well under $100K.

With even the smallest sale being a challenge, there are a few choices.  You can panic and be found curled up in the fetal position under your desk.  You can give up on real estate and find something else easier to do like selling power boats in a dead economy or greeting at Walmart. 

Or you can resolve to take this time to really focus on the important things in your marketing and sales plans.

While I have curtailed print advertising, I am now doing more small customized mail drops than ever.  They are of better quality both visually and from a content perspective.  I continue to work on my Internet presence, and with the help of a friend who helped run the original Blacksburg Electronic Village, I am working to build an electronic village for the Crystal Coast. I expect to be successful selling real estate when the market turns and this electronic village is an important part of my strategy.

I am convinced that local information, created locally, and focused locally will be the key to success when buyers come back to the market.  There is a lot of information on the web.  Sorting through it has become a great challenge. Creating quality information that provides real value for consumers can be the difference between success and failure.

While I participate in a large number of sites that try to suck information up from local sources and reparse it so that consumers can use it, I remained unconvinced that consumers will find me through these sources.

I am betting on creating local Internet information sources. To be of real value, they have to be managed and promoted locally so that they can end up being the gold standard for information in an area.  It is not an easy challenge, but now is a good time to focus on it.

We are already experimenting with real estate listings on the backend of the local information.  Getting good information into a site takes time and effort, but I would rather have good information than misinformation.  Good information will draw people.  When is the last time you saw someone thirty or under use a phone book?

While I do not really view this as innovating our way of a crisis, I do consider it staying focused on positive steps that in the end will be rewarded.

There was a time when no one wanted to work for Apple Computer.  We often measured an applicant for a job on his willingness to work for a company that many thought was going out of business.

We found people to work for us, and it does not take a leap of the imagination to conclude that those who are willing to work the hardest for the least amount of success will likely be very successful when times improve.

It all comes down to refusing to be beaten down even when everything looks the bleakest.  Just like I did before, I will keep treating my clients just as professionally as I always have.  I will keep working to improve the way that I can be effective for clients.  If I can deliver value, they will remain my clients through bad times and good times.

I will not leave any stone unturned in looking for ways to be successful.

You can count on my smile coming from the knowledge that I will survive.

Just a few days ago my wife and I were in line at the supermarket.  The lady in front of us did not have a lot of items since it was an express lane.  However, she decided to pay for her groceries with a check.  It took longer for her to write the check, than it did to scan and bag her whole order.

I am rarely in a rush so I was not bothered by the lost time.  I did occur to me that it had been a very long time since I had seen someone write a check for groceries.  Times have changed quickly because using a check is the way I remember paying for groceries for much of my adult life.

What has happened in the last couple of months in the financial world is certainly something unprecedented in my life.  The changes which will happen as a result of this are unknown at this point, but they will likely be substantial.

This got me to thinking about how real estate might need to change.

The buyers who resufrace are likely going to different.  So much wealth has been lost, that I would not be surprised if a different type of buyer comes calling.

We may have many retirees who have been permanently downsized. They might be looking for much smaller homes.  Also I think people are going to be much more careful about where they locate. Stability in an area is going to be a selling feature.

The trend away from traditional media for searching for properties is going to accelerate.  Newspapers cannot seem to downsize fast enough.  Printed catalogs with just homes in them seem a dying way of marketing.

We have already seen buyers flock to the web, but even that might be turned on its head.

The large national sites have gotten even bigger.  Yet the amount of warm and fuzzy information that they provide about areas is slim to non-existent.  Some are working to attract local experts and comments. They hope to build up some local knowledge so that buyers can find more than square footage and price on their sites.

However, I think that effort to bring local experts to these large sites where their voices might be lost is doomed from the start.  There just are not enough local experts who enjoy writing to provide any kind of decent coverage even for the large national sites that are smart enough to know that they need them.

As people continue to learn the web, static webpages will also die a long and painful death.  At some point I think the whole equation has to be turned around.

Instead of trying to get people to ever larger sites where they can search among countless properties in a manner that is similar to looking for a needle in a haystack, I think we have to work to get people to sites which are built on local information and happen to have real estate in their mix also.

If you think about it, people looking for homes want to know much more than what might be in a listing.  In times past they would visit and try to imagine themselves living in the area.  Now people often want to hear from others living in an area before they will even consider visiting. Social networking is now very important.

That changes the equation because now you need fresh, continuously updated local content to even get a shot at the clients.  You also need information from people besides yourself.

My thought is the best way to start is to have a site which is an electronic town square.  You have events, business listings, blogs, pictures, and real estate listings.

A friend of mine who has been working for years on publicly accessbile wireless network plans for cities and towns has a similar vision and a wife who is a Realtor® like me.

He was director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village for years so the Internet runs through his veins.

Recently he has brought up a site for Carteret County which I think will turn out to be a great resource for the people of the county and for others who might want to be residents.  It is also going to be a great place for Realtors® to hang their shingle.

While the Carteret North Carolina site is new and still getting content and listings, I think it offers a glimpse of the future.

Certainly not all of our current world of real estate is going to disappear, but I do think our other sites will have to evolve like my company's website where we now have a blog, Crystal Coast Living, that I am fortunate enough to be writing.

I figure if stock prices keep going down, soon people will turn to something pretty tangible like land to protect their remaining wealth.  Waterfront property or nice homes in an area with low cost living might start looking attractive.  A piece of land might be something nice to have once again.

If I have my way, that piece of land is going to be here on the Southern Outer Banks in Carteret County where the skies are blue almost all the time and the waters are warm enough for me at least three quarters of the year.

Few people would be able to define why they are attracted to a certain view.  Yet we often know when a view has us hooked.

Some views like the one to the left have broad appeal.  I have not seen anyone who did not enjoy seeing this panorama of the White Oak River just a few miles up river from the Intracoastal Waterway.

While we often are unable to become really familiar with a view by seeing it in different light, with today's real estate market, there are some views which we have seen in just about every light.

I have been really fortunate in my life to have a good view at the breakfast table for most of my adult life.

Just after graduating from college, I lived in an old farmhouse on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. 

It was actually my first real estate experience, and the beginning of a career that led me to an Angus operation with over 200 head of cattle.  When we had our cattle spread, we could sit on the front porch and look across the wooded hillsides north of Fredericton, New Brunswick.  In the fall or after a snowstorm, it was a spectacular view.

After we left the farm in 1984 and moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia to work for Apple Computer, we had this great view out our bedroom window of Halifax harbor.  My office downtown on Barrington Street was on the sixteenth floor of what was then the Toronto Dominion buidling. The walls of the office were glass with the harbor on one side and the Halifax Citadel on the other side.  It was beyond spectacular.

When we moved with Apple back to the states, we first spent two years in Columbia, Md. where we had no view except the tall trees surrounding our home.  I have often wondered if the lack of view was why we only lasted for two years in Columbia.

After Columbia, we spent the next twenty years on a side of a mountain overlooking Roanoke, Virginia. It is an amazing spot for a view and for taking pictures. I have a website with many of my best sunrise shots from the years since digital cameras have been available.  I could roll out of the bed in our mainfloor master and stagger onto the deck to take those early morning pictures and then slide back into a warm bed.

It was only after the renewal of a lifelong love affair with the North Carolina coast that I came down from our mountain.  As many folks know, finding an affordable water view on the coast is a real challenge.  It took us almost three years, but the view from our deck (and my upstairs office) is definitely worth it.

Being able to work and look at the river is a real treat.  While we do not have a view as spectacular as the one at the beginning of this post, I am pretty happy with where we are in Bluewater Cove.  Being ten minutes from the Intracoastal Waterway by boat and across the cul de sac from the community swimming pool has its advantages.

While our view at the coast is not the forty mile view that we have in Roanoke, I can just ride my bike out of the garage to get my morning exercise. Besides being able to drop the skiff into the water at the push of a button, I can also slide my kayak into the water from my own yard.  Those are advantages that are hard to beat.

We have a pretty special home on the coast, but everytime I show the house which has the view above, I wonder if the view could have seduced me if the house had been available when we were looking.  It's a much smaller home, and there is no swimming pool at my doorstep, but that view is almost intoxicating.  It was probably the view that hooked me on our Roanoke home so I have to conclude that I am susceptible.

I was up at the house with a view the other day taking some pictures in preparation for the Crystal Coast Showcase of Homes which takes place this weekend.  I think there are 300 homes scheduled for to be open for tours.

I will be doing my part by spending six hours on Sunday hosting an open house at the house with a view.  If nothing else, perhaps I will get my fill of the view and some more great pictures.  I am hoping to have a special setting to write a few posts for the Crystal Coast Living Blog that I am doing for our company.

While it is probably a little early to make a complete judgment, I think the great wave of retiring baby boomers might be re-evaluating their needs.

I am working with an average of about three couples a month planning to either move to the coast or retire to the Carolina coast.

Some things that I am seeing are not surprising if you are a baby boomer yourself.

First and foremost these people are looking for value.  They have no intention of spending all their retirement dollars on housing.  They want to be able to travel.

Generally they are looking for smaller homes, usually under 2,000 square feet.

They also want safety.  While they might tolerate an area that has mixed development, the tolerance for crime is non-existent.  We get many people who come to our area just because they have heard it is a safe area.

They want services, but they are willing to do without some shopping.  As I explain what we have in our area, I often hear that they don't care as much for shopping as they used to care.  Medical services are a totally different story.  They want quality medical services close by and easily accessible.

Perhaps because we are a water centric area, we see more water seekers, but being near the water or even being able to see the water is high on many retirees' list.

People also want reasonable property taxes.  They are sick and tired of being taken to cleaners for thousands upon thousands of dollars every year for questionable services.

Many are looking for a different life style.  They want to be active, including having trails for hiking, beaches for walking, and clean water for fishing or boating.  Many are like me and love to kayak and bike.

They also want a temperate climate.  I hear over and over again how people are tired of harsh winters and no sunshine.  They want to see the sun and have the opportunity to be outside.

People also are looking for friendly people.  They want to be part of the communities and to make new friends.

The good news is that we can deliver this to our clients here on the Souithern Outer Banks.  The more challenging part is that often their budget won't stretch for that desired water view which in spite of the downturn remains a challenge to find at a reasonable cost.

Many folks are settling for water access communities where there is a common area on the water and some other amenities. More communities like that are on the drawing boards.

I think very few retirees are hoping to duplicate their current home during retirement. Perhaps the upper income segment will continue to move in that direction, but I certainly do not see it for the middle income people that I have been meeting.

Probably the biggest challenge right now is convincing people that sellers in our area are not in dire straits.  Most buyers are over estimating the market conditions in Carteret County.

With the news full of foreclosures, I think a lot of buyers come to the table with the idea that the sellers are going to fall all over their offer.  That's often not the case.  The Charlotte, NC News & Observer did a nice piece on foreclosures in North Carolina.  They have a very good interactive map that shows where foreclosures are a huge problem.  All you have to do is point to a county to see the county's statistics.

I am going to make it a point to show new clients the map so their expectations are altered slightly.

With a downturn in new listings and some builders finding that their homes don't appraise at a profitable level, I am of the belief that we will see better times for sellers in the next twelve months. 

I am looking forward to the new buyers who have new expectations.  If any of them want to make a purchase before the market turns, now is the time for them to start looking.  I think the folks who have bought in the last few months are going to be very happy, especially those who got water views at great prices.

For those wanting to see more on our area, I have some slide shows starting with an Emerald Isle Beach Walk, my Coastal Carolina Collection of mostly sunsets and sunrises, for the boaters in the group, Mackerel Morning is a good tour of the water, and finally fishermen might like Anniversary Fishing where we perched on our own private beach.  Enjoying a NC style private beach is pretty special.