Knoxville, TN, 100% financing for your new home.

I got a flyer last week from our Knoxville TVA Employees Credit Union (TVA stands for Tennessee Valley Authority, the guys that run the dams and power plants around here) headlined "100% Financing Available" so naturally it caught my eye.

Reading on it said it was a 2 year ARM, adjusted 1% every two years with a cap of 8% over the starting rate.

Years 1 and 2 have a 4.875% rate

Years 2 and 3 goes up to 5.875%

Years 5 and 6 goes up to 6.865%

It also has a maximum cap of 8% over the starting rate so the most it could ever be in this scenario is 12.875%

To be a credit union member all you have to do is open a savings account and reside in one the counties they have a branch in; The greater Knoxville area and Knox County certainly qualifies. You can open a savings account for as little as $5.00.

Owner occupied single family residences only.

Visit KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com if you need to find a new Knoxville area home to try this 100% financing out on.

August-September Calendar of Event for Knoxville, Tennessee

First up is the annual "Shakespeare on the Square"on the downtown Market Square Mall. All performances are free but donations are accepted.

The first play is "Love's Labors Lost on July 17, 19, 25, 27, & 31st at 7:00 pm nightly. This is a funny play about the King of Navarre and his 3 most loyal friends who vow to shut themselves away from the world for 3 years to study.

However the Princess of France and 3 of her most beautiful ladies in waiting take their own vow to interrupt the King's studies. No bets on who wins.

Next is the "Merchant of Venice" July 18, 20, 24, 26; August 1, 2, 7, 9, 15, 17 and also at 7:00 pm nightly.

Merchant is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays and is about green racism, and the abuse of power (could be about politics). The courtroom scene where the lender insists on collecting some most unusual collateral is classic.

On August 16th is the annual "Feast with the Beasts" at the Knoxville Zoo

Get a sitter and leave the kids at home for this "adults only" party.Area restaurants and vendors offer BBQ, hot wings, pasta dishes, deserts, and adults beverages from local distributors adn breweries.

Live bands entertain on several of the Zoo's stages and there's a silent auction to benefit the Zoo. A very popular and rocking event for adults of all ages over 21.

The Tennessee Valley Fair Runs this year from September 5-14th at Chilhowee Park in east Knoxville with fun for all ages. Exciting rides, live music, midways, agricultural exhibits at the Jacob's Building, tractor pulls, and lots of good old fashioned fun.

September 14th - 16 is "Hank Days" a celebration of the life and music of country music legend Hank Williams Senior.

Road trip

One of my many avocations is being an e-PRO Trainer for the National Association of Realtors and the Internet Crusade who administer the certification for NAR.

This involved traveling to nearby boards and associations of Realtors to deliver the e-PRO message and give a short presentation about what the course will do for you to bring you up to speed with today's technology.

Yesterday (July 24th) I had two associations to visit. First up was the Haywood County Association of Realtors located in beautiful Waynesville, North Carolina and about a hundred miles southeast of Knoxville. It's a beautiful drive along Interstate 40 skirting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I was here last year; great people, and Lisa Brown the AE is a e-PRO graduate. She told me she was able to build the association website after becoming an e-PRO.

We had a small turnout but everyone was enthusiastic about the program and all of them signed up to take the e-PRO course.

My next gig was about 60 miles away in Clayton, Georgia, a popular summer getaway and vacation home for the Atlanta area residents. There are also a lot of Florida residents who come to this part of the country to get away from the summer heat.

My journey took me by the quaint little town of Dillsboro, North Carolina, home of the Great Smoky Mountain Mountains Roadroad. Since my next class wasn't until 3:00 PM I stopped by for a quick visit. The GSMR is a private railroad that runs excursion trips through the Smoky Mountains for about 50 miles or so. I've been on a couple and it's a great way to spend the day and see some scenary you probably would not see any other way.

Here's the train loading up for another trip.

The GSMR has been featured in several movies including the crash scene in "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford. They still the wrecked bus(s) the train ran over in the escape scene.

On to Clayton. I got there about 12:30; still lots of time before my 3:00 pm show so I wandered around. Clayton is a charming little town up in the north Georgia mountains.

Since it was about lunch time I paid a visit to the Clayton Cafe located right on Main Street.

If you're ever in Clayton around lunchtime you need to pay them a visit. The place was packed when I walked and one of the watresses said "Honey, you can sit down there at the community table if you want." Worked for me so I went and sat down. Turns out the community table is a long table in the rear where the local go to visit with each other.

There were two charming ladies already sitting there. They both smiled and started up a conversation. One was from Atlanta and her and her husband own a weekend home near there; she left him taking a nap while she came for lunch. The other lady was a local resident who retired to Clayton because her two daughters live near there.

I ordered the meat loaf with mashed potatoes, pinto beans, cornbread, of course a big glass of iced tea, and peach cobbler for desert. WOW! It was delicious; I ate every bite plus 2 glasses of tea.

I wandered around Clayton for a bit after lunch. Found this interesting looking rock house down the street from the cafe. My fellow Realtors later told me you can rent it for gatherings, meetings, social events, etc. It's called, not surprisingly, "The Rock House"

Found a great bookstore that invited you to come in, have a cup of coffee, and browse so I did. Lots of interesting books about local events, places, history, and great coffee.

It was now after 2:00 pm so I headed back down to the Rabun County Association of Realtors for my last class.

Their AE, Mary Ann Rich is a very gracious lady who not only welcomed me but gave me a big bag of fresh vegetables one of her members had dropped off at the association for the membership. I got some fresh summer squash and cucumbers, mmmmmmm.

Did the class and ended up staying awhile to visit with some of the attendees.

Clayton and Rabun County Georgia has some pretty pricey real estate for a sleepy little north Georgia town.

You can buy this beautiful, log B & B on Apple Pie Ridge Road for only $199,999

They also have quite a few listings on the area's many lakes that are priced in the low 7 figure range.

All in a all a fun day and a great road trip. I saw some countryside I've never visited before, made some new Realtor friends, and got a big bag of fresh vegetables not to mention that great lunch at the Clayton Cafe.

If anyone is thinking about becoming an e-PRO, my trainer website has a short video that explains all about the course. It's taught 100% online and unlike other NAR designations (e-PRO is a certification), there is NO RECURRING ANNUAL FEE to maintain.

I can also get you a $25.00 discount if you'll email me directly instead of signing up online.

Throw away your paper business card

Back when I got my first Palm Pilot I loved the infra red application that let you 'beam' addresses and information to another PP user.

My Treo cell phone has the same application and I find it very convenient to simply beam my business card electronically into someone else's cell phone.

Unfortunately there is a flaw in that application; both parties need to have infra red capability in their devices to make it work.

Not to worry, some smart people have came up with a solution.

MyDropCard.com will email your electonic business card to anyone's email account by simply sending their email address via a text message to Drop Card.

The account, like most of the new cool stuff, is free.

1. Set up your drop card account with your contact information. (you can have both business and personal) and you can also include your firm, name, websites, blog, social networks, and most anything else you choose.
   
2. To send it to someone just get their email addresss and text it to 41411 in this format: "drop name@theiremail.com (that's a space between "drop" and "name", a real space, not an underline _)
3. Drop Card will forward to their email account your contact information like this:

What the heck is "del.icio.us"?

If you're among the still shell shocked from trying to get a handle on web 2.0 don't be alarmed; you're not alone

Just when I think I'm making progress another load of new stuff gets dumped into the pile.

The latest load is "Social Bookmarking" sites.

If you're like me you're probably saying to yourself: 'what the heck is "social bookmarking"?

Turns out it's pretty simple to use and a pretty cool application.

One of the most common is called "del.icio.us" and it works like this:

Let's say you find a website that has some neat stuff you want to come back to.

Before now you could save it in your web browser as a "Bookmark" and come back to it on your computer.

However if your computer is like mine, it could take 5-10 minutes to scroll through your bookmarks; too long and too unorganized.

But with del.icio.us you can save it on their website; that is, bookmark it there with some refinements.

The obvious advantage is that you can access it from any other computer anywhere by simple logging into your del.icio.us account and going to it.

Another plus is once your del.icio.us bookmark list starts getting larger you can order it by adding tags when you save something which helps you find it later. For example this is what my Active Rain del.icio.us bookmark looks like:

Title: ActiveRain Real Estate Network

URL: http://activerain.com/

notes: great website for Realtors and other real estate professionals. Blogging school for beginners.

tags: blogging, social real estate, social networking

And of course it's fully editable anytime.

Once you get lots of stuff in del.icio.us you can search the tags to easily find things.

Another advantage is that you can also build a network of people you might want to share bookmarks with.

Your network connects you to other del.icio.us users — friends, family, even new people you run across while exploring del.icio.us. You can add people to your network and keep track of their latest bookmarks. And when you save new bookmarks, you can share them with people in your network simply by clicking on a username.

It's very easy to create a del.icio.us link in your browser's bookmarks toolbar to easily save websites of interest to revisit later.

Give del.icio.us a try, I think you will find it a useful tool.

"http://www.TinyURL.com" another great, FREE web tool

Have you ever wanted to send someone the URL for a website with some cool stuff but the address was about 9 inches long, i.e. http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6 OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC 9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg% 252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP"

With a simple, FREE web application called TinyURL.com you can turn that humongus URL into a........well, a tiny one like this: http://tinyurl.com/6

Now you can send "http://tinyurl.com/6" instead of  "http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6 OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC 9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg% 252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP"

and it will open up to the long URL

To make using www.TinyURL.com even easier you can drag the tiny URL up onto your browser's links toolbar and then just by clicking on it you can create a tiny URL for that long one and it copies it onto your computer clipboard.

Then just hit "Ctrl" and "v" on your keyboard and it's pasted wherever you want it.

Another great, FREE web tool to make your life easier.

Google alerts, a very useful tool

Do you use "Google Alerts"?

A Google Alert is simply an email update on the latest Google results for whatever you want to monitor.

You can set up an update at whatever frequency you choose to keep you updated on things like:

• Your name
• Your city or area
• sports teams
• news for an area
• or pretty much whatever subject you choose.
  

Once you set up your alert Google automatically will search that term and email you the results.

1. "Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts - 'News', 'Web', 'Blogs', 'Comprehensive', 'Video' and 'Groups'.
   
2. A 'News' alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
   
3.  A 'Web' alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
   
4. A 'Blogs' alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
   
5. A 'Comprehensive' alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice. * A 'Video' alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.
   
6. A 'Groups' alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

I have several set that keep me updated daily whenever there is anything new on the web with:

• my name
• my website
• my city
  
• and a couple of others.
  

Great FREE tool from the folks at Google.

Knoxville Tennessee weekly home sales report

Each Sunday in the Knoxville New Sentinel’s real estate section they print a list of property transfers from the previous week as recorded in the Knox County Register of Deed’s office.

I noticed this Sunday, July 13th, there was almost 3 pages of real estate transfers totaling 144 sales in Knox County alone. This would not include Maryville, Oak Ridge, or anything in Loudon county or the surrounding area.
The breakdown went like this:

• $500,000 to $1,000,000  12 closed sales
• $300,000 to $500,000     10
• $200,000 to $300,000     19
• $150,000 to $200,000     22 sales
• $100,000 to $150,000     35
• $50,000 to   $100,000     25
• $0         to   $50,000       21

For a total of 144 closed sale this past week in Knoxville County. Here are some photos of the homes sold.

This beautiful Farragut home closed at $749,900

Visit www.KnoxvilleTennesseeRealEstateBlog.com to see more recently sold Knoxville area homes

Gas saving tips

Today on Inman News I noticed a column devoted to gas saving tips offering 12 gas saving tips geared towards real estate sales and marketing.

"General tips The folks at Edmunds.com decided to test which gasoline-saving tips really work. They conducted their tests under real-world conditions. Here are the six tips that they say will make a real difference in your gasoline mileage.

1. Take the pedal off the metal. The Edmunds' test showed you can reduce your gas consumption by 31 to 37 percent simply by gently accelerating rather than gunning it. You can also save money by taking your foot off the accelerator as soon as you see a light ahead of you change.

Read the rest here.

Also on Edmunds is an interesting test titled the "Gas-Sipper Smackdown!" Small Car Cage Match. Which Delivers the Best Gas Mileage?

These tests were run under several circumstances with different winners in 5 classes

1. Best back-roads cruiser — 50-65 mph for 334 miles of back roads
2. Best city roller — stop-and-go for 133 miles of Las Vegas city streets
   
3. Best highway flier — a steady 75 mph for 209 miles of interstate
   
4. Lowest fuel costs — Which of the challengers saved us the most cash?
   
5. Greenest small car — Which spewed the least greenhouse gases on our trip?

And the winners were.........

Not surprisingly, the Toyota Prius with 3 first place finishes and two seconds in the 5 categories.

After the fact referral fees raise their ugly heads again

I just got a call from a fellow Realtor on the other end of the state who is being pursued for an after the fact referral fee.

If you're a Tennessee real estate license there is a very strong state law that protects you against such goings on.

If one of these folks tries to stick their hand into your wallet after you've already established an agency relationship with someone just haul out this copy of Tenessee's "After the Fact Referral Fee" law. That should send them packing.

The Governor did sign this bill and it is now the law in Tennessee.

Here's a link to another AR posting I wrote about this subject that gives some other good resources to use no matter what state you're in.

"After several states got referral fee laws passed the relocation industry decided they needed to get on board for damage control and PR. The Employee Relocation Council (ERC) http://www.erc.org/ formed a coalition along with the Association of Real Estate Licensing Law Officials (ARELLO) http://www.arello.org/ which has put in place a mechanism where a real esatate licensee can file a no cost, appeal what they feel are unjust requests for referral fees.

All the members of the ERC, which includes large and small relo companies such as: Suddeth, Armstrong, Purdential, PHH, and many others have signed onto the Coalition and agreed to abide by it's guidelines and rulings.

If you feel you've been unfairly or unjustly asked to pay a referral fee for someone you've already been working with you can file a complaint from this ERC website http://www.erc.org/coalition/tax_legal/interchange.shtml which will very quickly be brought to the attention of senior executives of the employee's firm and relocation company management for a resolution.

No charge for filing the complaint. Acccording to their website the new state laws and bad PR they were getting seem to have had the desired effect. "The results of a Coalition survey of national real estate relocation directors indicated that 63 percent found the number of requests for after-the-fact referral fees had declined in the last year. All those who participated in the survey and had used the Interchange found the results to be favorable. Eighty-five percent of the referral fee grievances that are brought to the Coalition's Interchange are resolved in favor of the complainant. (the complainant would typically be a real estate licensee)"