While building is down throughout most of the country, Trimark Properties announced earlier this week that they will be breaking ground on two new Gainesville apartments near the Univeristy of Florida campus this month.  The two new developments are slated for July 2009 completion, and will be ready long in advance of their August 2009 move-in dates for new residents.

Trimark Properties has built several new luxury apartment complexes in the last few years.

Previous Gainesville Apartments Developed:

• Ashton Lane
• Heritage Oaks
• Royale Palms
• Camden Court

This year, the Trimark Properties development team will be building:

• New Phase of Luxury apartments at Stratford Court
• Sabal Palms
  

Trimark Properties just added the webpages for these two properties to their Gainesville apartments website earlier this month. The Sabal Palms Gainesville Apartments page shows that there will be three floorplans, including two different 3 bedroom / 3 bathroom floorplans, and a spacious 4 bedroom / 4 bathroom floorplan.  One of the three bedroom floorplans includes a bay window area.

Stratford Court's new phase will be announced in further detail in the next few weeks. Stratford Court will offer mainly 2 bedroom / 2 bathroom and 3 bedroom / 3 bathroom floorplans.

Both apartment complexes will be within 2 blocks of the UF campus and walking distance to Sorority Row in the popular University Heights overlay. Features will include gourmet kitchens with granite countertops, energy efficient appliance packages, real maple wood cabinetry in the kitchen and luxury bathrooms, washer/dryers included, oversized windows for abundant sunlights, picture shelves in each big bedroom, dual master suites, private luxury bathrooms with porcelain tile and pedestal sinks, designer light fixtures and upgraded black appliance packages.

For further details, check out their websites.

I love the Active Rain hosted blogs and really enjoy the social networking you can find on the site-- but I've recently noticed that some pages get indexed longterm by Google, and some pages an dropped within several days from the search engine result pages.

How to check if your blog posts are indexed by Google:

1. First, go to your blog on Active Rain
2. Copy the entire URL-- except the Http://
   mine is activerain.com/blogs/gainesvilleapartments
3. Open a Google search
4. Type site:
5. then paste the copied URL (minus the http://) into the search bar
   mine will read site:activerain.com/blogs/gainesvilleapartments
6. Hit enter
7. Look at what is displayed in the search results

Questions to ask yourself about the results:

1. Most importantly: are all of your individual blog posts listed?
2. Are some of your individual posts being indexed, and not others?
3. Is the URL for your Active Rain blog in the index?
4. Are your tag clouds being indexed?
5. Are your archives being indexed?

Here's what it should look like ideally:

1. Each individual blog post should be indexed and listed in the results
   Check out the title and description and consider how you can write them in the future to maximize your click through
2. Your main blog page should be indexed
3. Your archives should be indexed
4. Your tags should be indexed

Share your results here.   <----- Why?  So we can help each other understand what pages are being indexed on Active Rain by Google, and what we can do to maximize our collective and individual blogging on the site.

 

Trimark Properties launched the beta version of their new webpage focused on showcasing listings of their UF Housing Options.  Aimed at incoming freshmen, undergraduate and graduate students, their new webpage will offer a resource which allows consumers to check availability, compare University of Florida housing options, check pricing and take virtual tours. The webpage currently only lists information on a few of their offerings, including The Ivy House, The Courtyards and Windsor Hall-- but over the next few weeks, the page will expand to include other offerings as well.

Finding housing near the University of Florida campus is an ongoing challenge for students.  With a limited number of parking spaces and a high number of students attempting to access the campus via foot, there is an ever-increasing demand for private luxury dorms, duplexes, luxury apartments and houses for rent within the 5 block radius considered to be "close to campus". UF housing options are incredibly limited for those students who apply to UF late in the year, since on-campus housing is limited and the waitlist is very long. Students should check out this blog looking for UF Dorms & Housing.  The same writer is also offering tips on the Gainesville apartments market.

Trimark Properties currently offers the following UF student housing options:

• The Ivy House- female-only private dorm just 1 block from campus, next to Norman Hall
• Windsor Hall - co-ed luxury dorm for UF students, 2 blocks from class
• The Courtyards - student apartment suites, across the street from UF
• Houses for rent - 3 to 7 bedrooms in size (jointly leased)
• Luxury apartments for rent - including Stratford Court and Heritage Oaks
• Affordable apartments for rent - including University Heights and Arbor Lofts

The most common request made by students is for furnished, all-inclusive single dorm rooms for Fall 2008 move-in.  For that request, Trimark Properties management recommends:

• The Ivy House for those want to have a typical dorm set up, but with a more luxurious setting and a guaranteed single dorm room
• Windsor Hall for those that do not want to share a bathroom with others (private studio suites are available for both men and women; there is a female-only building and a co-ed building)

For complete details, visit the UF Housing page on the Trimark Properties website.

Well it's official!

Trimark has broken ground on their 5th luxury apartment complex in Gainesville, Florida.  Named Ashton Lane, the complex will be located just two blocks from the University of Florida (and walking distance to University of Florida classes).  Luxury apartments near UF has become a signature niche within the Trimark portfolio, and because of that, Trimark has added a page to their website dedicated fully to the luxury apartments and condos near UF.

The Ashton Lane page will be launched within the next few weeks, with floorplans and a pre-construction rendering.

Exciting news!

We purchased Windsor Hall Gainesville - a University of Florida Dorms alternative.  The closing went smoothly on August 15th, 2007 and we began managing the dorm-style double suites and the large single (studio-style) suites on Thursdy August 16th.  We've begun leasing the last remaining suites for Fall 2007 move-in.  It's an exciting time!

Windsor Hall offers a unique alternative to traditional University of Florida dorms.  Unlike the UF Housing policies, Windsor Hall policies:
* Guarantee that UF students will receive the exact floorplan type they request
* Windsor Hall does not overbook rooms or sell more leases than there are rooms for (UF is famous for placing students who wanted single dorm suites into temporary triples-- what is a temporary triple?  A room that is only designed and barely big enough for 2 occupants-- but they put in 3 occupants).
* Offers assigned parking and does not oversell the lots, so that students that choose to live at Windsor Hall will always have a place to park their cars.
* Offers both a co-ed and female-only building choice.
* Offers luxury suites with upgraded furniture package to every student who chooses to live at Windsor.
* Offers private bathrooms attached to each luxury suite (no sharing bathrooms with an entire floor of people)
* Offers an on-site gym and fitness center within steps of your suite.
* Offers complete maintenance and resident suppot, 24 hours per day.
* Windsor Hall offers guaranteed availability of space for each occupant who signs a lease.

Windsor Hall offers several room styles (all are luxury suites with all-inclusive rent packages and full furniture packages).  Suite styles include:
* Luxury studios with private luxury bathrooms and full kitchenettes
* Luxury studios with shared upgraded bathroom/kitchenettes
* Luxury single rooms with private or shared upscale bath/kitchenettes
* Luxury double suites with large, luxury bathrooms, full furniture packages, and full kitchenettes
* X-Lg Double suites (huge) on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors

Windsor Hall amenities include:
* Privately owned UF Housing
* Luxury suites
* Full furniture packages with captain's beds and desk sets
* Upscale bathrooms, many with pedestal sinks and ALL with full-size bathtubs
* Convenience elevators
* Large pool
* Full fitness center and gym
* On-site night manager
* Professional Roommate matching available at no extra charge

Click here to schedule an in-person tour.

 

Good morning, Active Rain members!

As those of you who regularly read our blog know, we've been researching the best services for blogging, and we've tried several different services including:

• Private Hosting
• Vox.com
• Livejournal.com
• ActiveRain.com
• Blogger.com

At this time, we've decided to go with private hosting while using the Blogger service.  As others have noted, Blogger is quickly indexed by Google (normally within an hour).  And by hosting the blogger template on our own site, we are able to completely edit ALL code, not just the template, to remove those pesty nofollow tags and other non-helpful coding that can be imbedded.

We will be using the blog to discuss our findings in real estate and apartment rental marketing, as well as advertising the changes in our growing business located in Gainesville, Florida. The new apartment marketing blog can be found at the Smart Apartments Blog, which discusses UF dorms, UF Housing & Gainesville Apartments.  There's also a blog that just discusses the Gainesville apartments market. For those of you who are not familiar with our company, we are an LLC which specializes in real estate management for properties walking distance to the University of Florida campus.  We offer student housing, luxury Gainesville apartments, commercial office and retail space, and historic houses. 

We will be opening it up for guest blogging, too, for companies that are our affiliates on Active Rain.  If you are interested in posting guest blog articles about your company (linking to your site allowed, of course), comment here or email me directly. 

Hope to hear from you soon!

Aubrey

We've recently decided to expand our real estate marketing platform to include a blog about the real estate industry, specifically including information on the rental market, as well as publishing our press releases and blogging about living in Gainesville.  I enjoy blogging on Active Rain, but thus far, I seem to be mostly visited by other members (ie: real estate professionals) rather than visited by consumers, reporters, etc.  

We've been researching how to do this for a few weeks and tested a few blogs, including gainesvilleapartements.blogspot.com, livejournal, blogsavy, and Active Rain (of course).

Another member pointed out that blogspot blogs (also known as Blogger) have no follow tags in both the post body and the comments, to prevent spam, when posting it on Blogspot.  It's a free service (and free of ads) but you seem to get what you pay for with them.  It's one of the few instances where I find myself disappointed with Google.  We've therefore decided to self-host the blog ourselves, on a server we have access to.

SO, for those of you who have blogs off of Active Rain, what do you use?  Would you recommend the service to us, to promote our Gainesville Florida Apartments and House Rentals?

Let me know!  If you'd like, feel free to provide a link to your blog and critiques of the system.

Well, we've finally completed our first Squidoo Lens, based on the recommendation of a friend.  Squidoo offers very neat tools for webpage creation, but I found the HTML editor to be chunky and hard to handle.

We'll be updating the lens in the weeks to come, to include better navigation and potentially more photos of Gainesville apartments and houses for rent in Gainesville Florida.  We only offer apartments for rent, so you won't find any listings for sales information in Gainesville on the squidoo lens at this time.  We built the lens with the hope of driving traffic to our main gainesville florida apartments website which works as a brochure on our company for prospective renters. 

What have you found out about traffic and squidoo?  Have you done well?  I heard that it is far more helpful for sales than for rentals, but our company focuses on apartments and not houses, and the only houses we offer are for rent... so this may not be the right type of market for us.

Don't Risk Being Banned From Craigslist

I've noticed a lot of recommendations on Active Rain for the 3rd party service sites Vflyer and Postlets. Like the rest of you, I love their functionality and think that the idea is fantastic, and my company often uses them to post listings for available Gainesville apartments. I've seen a lot of improvement in the last few years and hope that the sites remain in beta (and therefore, remain free) for a while.

However, many agents here on Active Rain have posted about using the services for 3rd party posting (or coded posting) on Craigslist, and this is a violation of the terms of use of the Craigslist posting service, and can result in having your account banned.

My company has used the services to post onto Craigslist in the past and was never caught-- but do you really want to risk a lawsuit that you cannot win, because you expressly agreed to the terms of use, or do you want to risk getting kicked off of Craigslist? Be careful. Don't do it.

There are several other very important issues outlined in the Craigslist TOU agreement that agents should read:

* Do not use craigslist to post "bait and switch"-- which means you must immediately remove an ad if the listing is sold
* Do not post "off topic" ads, such as links to blogs
* Consider this rule: "...hat includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in "services" and realize that it means that linking to your site within the housing section is actually a violation of their terms of use Realize that just because you haven't been caught, it doesn't mean you won't be.

Be careful. Read about the many users who have been banned or have had sites permanently blacklisted. Be careful! And good luck!

 

Gainesville Apartments Added to Rental Search in Gainesville

Well, it's official. We'll be building two new apartment complexes in Gainesville, Florida this year, and we are now in the process of adding the Gainesville apartments to the website's rentals seach functionality. This will allow prospective tenants to search by apartment name, apartment size (number of bedrooms), price per bedroom, total rental rate, and apartment type (in this case: luxury apartments) or proximity to UF campus. We specialize in student housing and housing for faculty and staff near the University of Florida, and these apartments will be luxury rentals with all the upscale features you would want, including washer/dryers in each apartment, Ethernet, gourmet kitchens, art nooks, and balconies with modern porch swings. You'll soon be able to see complete details on our Gainesville Apartments and other Gainesville Rentals website.