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This past week the Houston Association Realtors announced its initiative to help Houston's HOPE program by listing those homes for sale on the MLS. I know many Realtors have been involved with this program, but it is nice to see this renewed commitment by the real estate community in helping to improve our neighborhoods.

HOPE focuses on rebuilding neglected neighborhoods while helping families into homes. The program is open to first time and low income home buyers, and there are additional incentives for teachers, fire fighters, and police officers. When you couple the money you could receive through HOPE and the tax credit for home buyers, this turns out to be an extraordinarily fantastic deal. One of my favorite aspects of the program is that it teams up with builders to produce green homes for these families. These are not homes where the builder slaps on the green label to make them attractive to buyers; the homes meet Houston's Green Building Initiative, which follows the guide lines established for building a green home as laid out in the ANSI 700 and the International Residential code.

If you wish to read my thoughts on the program in further detail, you can see what I have written about Houston's Hope program, which will provide you with more information about taking advantage of it.

I have been writing a bit about converting an existing home to include green features. I have seen where my posts on this topic inspired others to take my ideas to discuss on their own. I think that this is great. If you are not buying a home, you should consider how you can add green features; hopefully this past Earth Day may have inspired you. Yesterday, I posted an article that looks at the solar lights that can be used to brighten spots around your home at night. This post has already been read by quite a few people, so you may want to check it out. If you are interested in finding some of those lights, CSN Lighting has a good selection, with great customer service from my experience. Soon I will be buying the solar light that can be turned on and off for my garage. (I was working on taking some solar light panels apart to see if I could make my own, then I found one there, which will serve my needs in the garage and shed).

Have a little HOPE in Houston, and go green in your home.

It is early morning and I have my cup of coffee, so it is a good time to sit back to reflect on the past year, along with my birthday wishes for the next year. I may not have been sharing these meanderings, but fortunately Dale Barker was kind enough to remind me to create a post for the Texas Birthday Group.

Having a birthday close to Thanksgiving has always placed me in a mood to consider what I am thankful for on this day. It may be easy to take a negative outlook though. I am still dealing with repairs to my home due to Hurricane Ike; business is not great; my stock portfolio seems non-existent; and I could go on. However, it is important to note that all of those concerns are temporary.

My wife has presented me with the most wonderful gift recently: the birth of a healthy baby girl, Sakura Erika (ten days ago). Why a Japanese first name? My son has a friend with this name, which means cherry blossom, and he thinks it a beautiful name. My two and half year old daughter, Katya, has been running around the house trying to help us with the newest member. My favorite moment is when I explained to her that the baby was hungry. She ran off to bring me all of the items my wife surrounds herself with when breastfeeding. Ok Papa, ready? It was an experience explaining that I did not have that capability. After finishing with work on Sunday morning, I spent the afternoon in the park with my son and toddler. That was a great gift to watch a teenager and toddler playing. I am ever so grateful for my family.

I have not been Active in the Rain recently, but I am thankful for this community. A little over a week ago, I encouraged a newly minted home inspector to come to this site. It has taught me so much, and I have made many great connections here, but, yes, it is not really part of my business plan at this time. This space has been the best ground to develop various skills, and I feel that there is more to learn here, so I cannot see fully giving up on this community. I just have to cut back to look at the broader picture.

I am thankful for my life, and the fact that I am in the business that I am in. I worked for years in a job where I could not be part of family events, or to see friends. I worked sixty or more hours a week as a senior manager, but I felt that my efforts were not providing me with the life that I wanted. Sure the home inspection profession has not been great, but I am making ends meet, and I have been pursuing paths to improve this work in these trying times. The challenges encountered are actually fun. Finding new ways to make it last and grow in difficult periods is a joy. We will see what happens in the coming year, but it will be good.

As most home inspectors in Texas should be aware by now, the new SOP and report form go into effect in February 2009. There have been changes made that we need to be aware of, and that we need to include in our reports. I took a preliminary version of those SOPs to create a simple checklist for our inspections. The requirements are listed on the form, and then spaces are left for notes. In some cases, I put down Yes/No answers which can be circled.

I based it on the SOPs so we would have a quick reference guide to ensure that we are meeting these requirements as we are getting used to them. I also included space at the beginning for some basic information about the job to have on hand. I included reminders to write the serial numbers down for appliances. This is not a requirement, but it is a good practice. You can then say that this is the specific piece of equipment that was examined, in case a unit was changed out, and there is an issue with the new unit. If you come up with any ideas on how to improve this, let me know, so I can update this file. I created this one fairly quickly, so I probably will be making changes to it soon. I was having fun creating a report form in HTML, but I am still working on it. I want to be able to save it as a pdf that would be clear when printed.

Here it is in pdf format:

New Checklist

I was performing a home inspection on the West side of Houston when I came across a method of creating air flow in rooms that was a bit unusual. I thought that I would share it with you as a continuation of part 3 of this series, but I am not sure that it really works too well. My simple test did not show much air going through it.

I noticed that there were a lot of return vents when walking through the rooms then in the hallway. Pictured below is two large returns in the hall, and then below that is a picture of a room. On the ceiling of the room, you will notice two vents that use a cover typical for registers. One is a register, while the other is meant to be a return.

Great, I thought. They have no ceiling fans in this house, so they are trying to get the air to flow by using ducts attached to the return plenum in each room. I noticed that one of the hall returns did not have a filter in it, and this should have been my first clue to its true purpose. I then go up into the attic. While wandering around, taking in the sights, I find two plenums above the returns in the hall ceiling, but something looked off.

I checked the duct work to see that the ducts from one return were going to the return plenum on the HVAC system, but the other plenum had ducts going to the returns in each room. I wondered if this could work. The drawing below is demonstrating what was meant to be happening.

The air goes through the returns in each room to the vent in the hallway. When the return in the hallway draws air, it is meant to suck air from this vent connected to the room returns. They could have hooked those ducts up to the plenum created for the return air since it was right there.

I took some tissue paper to the returns in the rooms to see if there was any air movement when the air conditioning came on. There may have been a little, but the tissue was not pulled by any suction, like it was at the actual return. This method may cause some air to move, but I doubt that it helps much. I would just take the fake return ducts, and attach them to the return plenum.

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Last night, my son read to me a paper he is working on about his experience with Hurricane Ike, and I realized that although I have been dealing with the aftermath of the storm, that I had not written about some of my observations of events around it. I was surprised by the lack of preparation by some people, and I was impressed at how neighbors pulled together, so I wish to share some random thoughts with you.

Home inspectors love their tools and gadgets, and I was glad that I stored my hand tools in an easily accessible spot. With no electricity or gasoline available, power tools quickly became useless. My son organized some neighborhood boys to create their own clean up crew, and to assist some neighbors, while I went with my pruning saw to several homes. The collapsible ladders that I sue during my home inspections became invaluable because I was able to carry them across the flooded areas with no problems. I managed to clear a few roofs of debris because of them. My son managed to help clear drains with my pick axe and rakes. Before the hurricane, people smiled at me for being so dedicated to hand tools; the week after the storm saw these tools in a different light. By the way, I have a lot of power tools; I just always preferred using hand tools, even my push mower.

I was glad that my son found several other boys. Our lives are so focused on what is happening inside the home, that boys do not seem to experience the outdoors as much, unless it is through some group's activity. For the evenings, I discovered that reading fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm proved to be a family favorite. My wife laughed as I trying to keep up with all of the different voices for the various characters. I have always read to my children, but the time became special when there was little else to do in the evenings. My son liked my reading of the play Cyrano De Bergerac which came after the fairy tales, which my daughter enjoyed. I often have not thought about the fact that many people do not keep books. One visitor called my home a library, since I have tomes stuffed into spaces in every room.

I am the cook in the family, and I worked hard to prepare healthy meals after we had lost power. I wished that my cooktop worked on gas, but I did have my grill. I had canned vegetables, but I was concerned that my pregnant wife and small daughter were not obtaining the nutrition that they needed. I rummaged around the remnants of my vegetable garden to find something for them. Grilled beets turned out well. I had to use my cell phone as a flashlight in a store to find some fruits and other vegetables. When a co-worker of my wife's complained that her children were starving because they had no cooked food to eat, my wife told her of my efforts. It turned out that this person had a gas stove, but simply was not cooking because the kitchen was dark. My wife became angry at this foolishness, and I became glad that I kept my head, so I could make a family meal each night.

Each evening after the storm we had a neighborhood party. We gathered at one house or the other to share what news we had managed to hear. During the day, we sought ways to help each other with the clean up. At one of these gatherings, we had families from two other subdivisions in our mist. They were amazed at the atmosphere on our block. They mentioned that nothing like this was happening around their own homes. Although I know that such events were taking place all around Houston, it is easy to forget that in some places this feeling of community was not as lively as I was experiencing, so I am glad for my neighbors. We really did look out for one another.

What can you expect in the aftermath of a storm? Well, that question is hard to answer. Many neighbors did not have coolers to store ice and other items in. Many did not have a means to cook, or stay entertained when there was no power. Clean water also became an issue. Keeping a cool head and thinking through problems becomes very important. Having good relationships with the neighbors was important too.

When I decided to create an additional site apart from my original static site, I wanted to develop a Wordpress blog site, because I believe that the blog is the best way to interact with others on the internet, and that Wordpress was the best platform to use. I was not disappointed.

Being a curious soul, I started to examine SEO, but my true interest was how could we in the real estate industry take the blog format into a further development that would best serve our consumers. I found that with a little determination, a little knowledge of code, and a little patience that I could make my site a one stop shop.

I have added a forum to allow visitors to have their own voice. I am creating a visual library to help people see some aspects of home inspections. I added the store to help you find items for the home. I am a professional real estate inspector (home inspector), who has written (what I think of as) useful articles when it comes to buying and selling a home. In short, I am placing the elements together to make this a site which can benefit home buyers and sellers or anyone interested in real estate.

When I first discovered OpenRealty, I thought that it would be nice for Realtors, but what use was it to me. I decide to download this open source program (free but donations appreciated) to see what it could do. I went through the process of uploading it to my site, and taking time here and there to see if I can easily modify it. This was a wonderful experience.

Was everything simple and the way that I like it? Well, no. The directions for the install were straight forward, but I had one head scratcher. I needed to set permissions for certain files after upload. This stumped me, but when I right clicked on the file on the site when I was using my FTP Client, I obtained a dialog box, which had an option similar in name to file properties. That allowed me to set the permissions. The next hiccup was when I was going from the administration section to the home page. I received an error. Reading the error message, I realized that the “Lazuli” template was set as my default, and that the first line could not be read by my browser. I opened the main page for the lazuli template in my editor, and deleted the first line. The page loaded fine.

Iwas then able to play with different pages in my editor to add my navigation buttons and blog header. To edit the pages like the home, contact us and about pages was easy enough, but I would have liked to copy information into it. I typed everything out in the editor, which allowed me to play with the style somewhat. Not bad, but I would have like a little more control. All other aspects of the program made perfect sense. I liked how to enter homes or agents. The listings looked good.

I know many of you have professional looking posts on your blogs for individual homes for sale, but this app may be worth a little effort for you. I decided to open this to the public to see how well it can work. If you like to check it out a little before using it on your own site, e-mail me, and I can set you up as an agent on my site. You can check it out by listing homes. I think you will find that this makes for a stunning way to present your clients homes. Here is the link: http://www.yourhoustonhomeinspector.com/openrealty. Let me know what you think.

When I decided to create an additional site apart from my original static site, I wanted to develop a Wordpress blog site, because I believe that the blog is the best way to interact with others on the internet, and that Wordpress was the best platform to use. I was not disappointed.

Being a curious soul, I started to examine SEO, but my true interest was how could we in the real estate industry take the blog format into a further development that would best serve our consumers. I found that with a little determination, a little knowledge of code, and a little patience that I could make my site a one stop shop.

I have added a forum to allow visitors to have their own voice. I am creating a visual library to help people see some aspects of home inspections. I added the store to help you find items for the home. I am a professional real estate inspector (home inspector), who has written (what I think of as) useful articles when it comes to buying and selling a home. In short, I am placing the elements together to make this a site which can benefit home buyers and sellers or anyone interested in real estate.

When I first discovered OpenRealty, I thought that it would be nice for Realtors, but what use was it to me. I decide to download this open source program (free but donations appreciated) to see what it could do. I went through the process of uploading it to my site, and taking time here and there to see if I can easily modify it. This was a wonderful experience.

Was everything simple and the way that I like it? Well, no. The directions for the install were straight forward, but I had one head scratcher. I needed to set permissions for certain files after upload. This stumped me, but when I right clicked on the file on the site when I was using my FTP Client, I obtained a dialog box, which had an option similar in name to file properties. That allowed me to set the permissions. The next hiccup was when I was going from the administration section to the home page. I received an error. Reading the error message, I realized that the “Lazuli” template was set as my default, and that the first line could not be read by my browser. I opened the main page for the lazuli template in my editor, and deleted the first line. The page loaded fine.

Iwas then able to play with different pages in my editor to add my navigation buttons and blog header. To edit the pages like the home, contact us and about pages was easy enough, but I would have liked to copy information into it. I typed everything out in the editor, which allowed me to play with the style somewhat. Not bad, but I would have like a little more control. All other aspects of the program made perfect sense. I liked how to enter homes or agents. The listings looked good.

I know many of you have professional looking posts on your blogs for individual homes for sale, but this app may be worth a little effort for you. I decided to open this to the public to see how well it can work. If you like to check it out a little before using it on your own site, e-mail me, and I can set you up as an agent on my site. You can check it out by listing homes. I think you will find that this makes for a stunning way to present your clients homes. Here is the link: http://www.yourhoustonhomeinspector.com/openrealty. Let me know what you think.

If you have been reading the various internet marketing blogs, you may have seen references to a growing trend for sites: having everything that a visitor needs for your niche right on your site. Once this is accomplished, they will have no need to go anywhere else. Do they need information on a specific topic? (Then use Wordpress as your CMS to post away). Do they want to have their own say in a forum?(Then integrate bbpress into your Wordpress blog). Do they need to know where to go for more information? (a blogroll or a links page, but maybe...a search engine on your own site?).

I have been slowly but surely converting my site into a one stop shop, so visitors will not need to leave. My site has come along way in the past few months, and I am about to launch an offline/online campaign to help promote it (I had to delay this to have time to work on the site). There is still work to be done (I am not looking for perfection, but I do want the elements to be working correctly). The last big part was having a search engine on my own site, where I can control the search to provide better results.

Until yesterday, my quest was taking me towards Zillow's API, which produced results that our visitors would like. I am still really impressed with Zillow for offering this to us, but I decided upon a different route because I felt that the consumer may need more than a search for homes. If I was clever enough, I guess I could have played with Zillow's codes to obtain my goal, but I found that all of my needs could be satisfied by Google. I created a search engine which produces results on my site, the way I want, and it is monetized with little effort. It was done through my Adsense account, where there is an option for a search engine.

Here are the steps (after much trial and error), so you can create this on your own search site:

1. You need to have the Adsense account. This was fairly easy to obtain.

2. Create a page where your results will appear. I went to my blog, viewed the source code in my browser, copied it onto my editor (notepadd++), I deleted all of the information that I did not want, which left me with a header and navigation buttons, I uploaded the page to my website's public html folder through my FTP client (Filezilla), and then I checked that it was there and looking good, while saving the URL of the page.

3. I logged onto my Adsense account, and followed the instruction for setting up the search engine. It was a quick and easy process, but here are some things to have at hand: websites where you want the search to be conducted; the html codes for colors to integrate the search engine's look with your site; and that exact URL for the results page. If you make a mistake, you can go back and change it on the Manage Ads section.

4. There will be two sets of code to copy and paste. One is for the search box, which I placed in my Sidebar.php (under the theme editor, remember to update file). The second was pasted onto my results page, which I had to upload again replacing the first one.

5. Done. Take it for a test drive to see the results. Oh well, I still do not position number one in the search results :).

I have my real estate mash-up site. I am going to continue playing with it, but at this point, I have the basic structure that I wanted for my goal of having what the customer needs in one place. If your curious about this process, you can go to my blog and read the posts in the Art of Business section. Any question, just e-mail me; otherwise, I wish you well with your own clients.

Your Houston Home Inspector,

Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

If this home inspector may beg a moment of your indifference to leave you with a thought to ponder, I would be most appreciative (he says with a smile). Looking at how internet users have been interacting with the real estate community on the web for the past few months in greater detail, and seeing that your site has been improving while receiving due recognition, I believe that I can make a helpful suggestion to take the association to a next step.

This missive has been inspired by a circumstance of last week. I was going to do an inspection of a home, and the Realtor representing a buyer was one whom I had worked with some months earlier. Being on the internet already, I googled his name to find his phone number, instead of digging through my rollodex. I found that his profile on your site was his main web presence, and I believe it could have been much better. Here are my thoughts:

A detailed, unique profile- sites like LinkedIn, ActiveRain, or Konnects among others allow users to create a personal profile which better serves the member. To have Realtors and other RE professionals create an original profile may enhance the web presence of many members who have no other site.

Add a social networking aspect to the site- this is a growing trend on the web, and HAR could help spread its message quickly and effectively to professionals and consumers through this medium. It will help develop a stronger community between the various professionals too.

Allow articles to be posted on your site and through e-mails like the Five Minute Realtor- my example here would be from the Houston West Chamber of Commerce. We can write one article per month, which is made available to the public through the web, and to members via e-mail. This is a great marketing and networking tool, which would be easy for HAR to accomplish.

Tying in offline and online networking- again from the chamber, having a business over lunch each month, where topics discussed could be about creating a valid working internet presence, which members could take back to improve their profiles and article submissions.

Well, that is my humble, basic outline, which I hope that you will consider. Considering that this is just a blog post, I will not belabor the points, but I think that these additions to the site could create a better real estate community here.

Your Houston Home Inspector,
Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

Is anyone out there? Writing a blog (or a static site) can be lonely at times, particularly if you feel that you are not driving traffic to your site. You check your analytics to see that certain posts are pulling in readers, so you may want to use them to help drive up the visitors to other posts. Here is one simple method to help your visitors find what others are reading on your site, and it could help increase traffic.

I cannot take credit for this idea, but I read the original post from an SEO a month ago, and I forgot to save the link. I developed a method which does not go into such detail as the original, but it works for me. Because of my business background, I have a love of going through reports, drilling down to the data that I need, but you do not need to be so detailed. I just installed Google Analytics, which does present the most read posts easily. I prefer my Awstats for a good quick overview. Even the statistics from a platform like Wordpress will provide you with what you need.

Step 1: Find the ten most popular posts or sections from your site.

Step 2: Find the ten most popular keywords or keyphrases being used to bring

visitors to your site. These are the terms people used to probably find the

post/sections mentioned above.

Step 3: Check those keywords/phrases in search engines like Google, Yahoo, or

Live. See where your post positions. Check out other results for that term

to find out what they did for that phrase. When you click on your site in

the search results, where did you land? Did you go to the area where the

result is?

Step 4: Go over your post or section to see how you can incorporate the

keyword/phrase into your post title, the first paragraph, or other means to

optimize for it. Make sure that the post has a clear call to action for what

you would like the visitor to do. Do you want them to comment? Or would

you like them to use your service? Make it easy for them to take the

action that you want.

Step 5: Set up a landing page or post for your blog or site which contains a list

with links of your most popular posts or sections. Use the keywords/phrases

which brought visitors to your site to describe the posts. If someone liked

one post, they may want to read more items.

Step 6: Have a friend check out your site navigation. You need an impartial

observer to tell you how easy it is to move about the site and find what

they are looking for. Ask different people to do this every so often, so you

can understand how your visitors interact with the site.

About the keywords/phrases: I find that searchers use slightly different terms when trying to find the same bit of information. For example, a popular post on this site deals with obscuring an exterior air conditioning unit from view. Some people find the post with a phrase like “landscaping around the air conditioning unit”, while others use “hiding the outside air conditioning unit”. A few people use the term compressor or condenser when referring to this unit. I combined the phrases to make “using landscaping to hide an exterior air conditioning unit”, then I incorporated the terms condenser and compressor into the post.

To do this thoroughly will take about three hours each month, which is not bad. This method has increased the average time spent on my blog by visitors, which is three times more than my static site's number. Sometimes, I just do a little bit of this each week when I have time. The main effort is rewriting the posts. Having a background of English lit, I try to avoid using the same terms again and again, but for optimization reasons, you should use your keyword or keyphrase again or again (about 15% of the post is the maximum). I still find that idea makes for odd reading, but I am getting a little better at it.