There was little or no training for agents in the early 70's. It truly was baptism by fire, trial and error, or the school of hard knocks - whatever you want to call it - or just good old fashioned luck. With only one black and white photo in the MLS listings delivered to our office each week, agents learned about local listings the old-fashioned way: same-day tours of new in-house listings so we would be familiar with them if … (45 comments)
margaret woda: SAYONARA, Activerain
- 04/01/14 11:55 PM
sa·yo·na·ra: foreign term \ˌsī-ə-ˈnär-ə, ˌsä-yə-\. Definition: good-bye. Origin: Japanese.
There you have it, the one and only word I know and can pronounce in Japanese. Yes, I'm going to be in trouble if I get lost or need to find a bathroom next week. That's because my beautiful, talented, successful daughter earned a trip to Japan through her job and she's taking her ol' mom! My Activerain blog will be abandoned (again) for a while, but my team will carry on for me at Long & Foster and my husband will hold down the fort at home. As usual, I'm sure that … (10 comments)
margaret woda: Quoted Again - Another 15 Minutes of Fame
- 08/28/13 03:31 PM
Discovered on ActiveRain If you saw Landscape Your Home to Sell - 5 Tips to Sell Green on Bankrate.com, you already know that this Crofton real estate agent was one of the "experts" quoted throughout the article. If you missed it, please allow me to share my 15 minutes of fame. Just click on the link at the beginning of this paragraph. You might even want to post a link to the article on your Facebook page because there is some good advice from other authorities, too, including a landscaper in Atlanta and an appraiser in Houston. It's timely advice for home sellers, … (5 comments)
This evening I decided to "play" real estate, not "do" real estate. In other words, I put on my customer hat and put away my real estate agent hat.
We've toyed with the idea of relocating to another area of the country ever since my husband retired three years ago. We're not what you would call "highly motivated" but we're more motivated now than we were a year ago, before lifelong savings and investments started to tank with the economy. Tonight I focused on South Carolina, where we lived in the 70's … (23 comments)
margaret woda: Make Your Own Link Buttons
- 02/25/09 04:10 PM
here have been a lot of posts about link button over the past few years. I saw one asking ActiveRain to please provide them for us. Someone else suggested using links instead of buttons and offered a tutorial on how to create a link. This post is going to show you how to make your own link buttons. FIVE SIMPLE STEPS FOR CREATING YOUR OWN LINK BUTTONS: STEP ONE: Choose an image and save it on your computer. Here is a group of buttons that I bought from istockphoto, (that's where I get most of my images) and I simply cropped … (109 comments)
margaret woda: Recipe for Consistent Income in Sales
- 02/24/09 05:05 AM
Even after decades in the real estate business, I sometimes need to pause and make sure I’m on track for consistent income. Some factors are out of my control, of course, such as the economy, politics, war or peace, competition, and sometimes even weather conditions. It’s important, however, that I do take control of whatever I can. One of these is a constant flow of three ingredients (or sources of business) feeding simultaneously into and through a funnel to produce consistent income:
FUTURE CLIENTS – Prospecting, prospecting, prospecting is to success in sales what location is to real estate. Did you ever get … (55 comments)
margaret woda: A Video You Absolutely Must See
- 10/28/08 12:52 PM
Imagine my surprise when I saw this video indicating my vote swung the election. Take a look... you might want to customize this and send it to your friends, regardless of your political viewpoint.
I guess the moral of this video is "Vote" (regardless of which candidate you support). Take a look at some of the ways history has been shaped by just one vote:
* 1645 - Oliver Cromwell gained control of England. * 1649 - Charles I of England was executed. * 1776 - America chose the English language instead of German. * 1800 - The Electoral … (27 comments)
margaret woda: Two New Grandbabies In One Month!
- 01/04/08 01:58 PM
For the past few days, I've been a little slow with acknowledging your comments... with good reason. I've been spending a lot of time at the hospital with my son and daughter-in-law, who just had their first baby, Jack Lawrence. We're very fortunate to have them nearby, in Northern Virginia - about an hour from Crofton, Maryland - and we're likely to spend more time with them in the few days as Sharon recuperates from an emergency C-Section. So please be patient, and forgive me if I'm not very prompt with reciprocating your comments or completing the military directories I started. When I'm … (32 comments)
margaret woda: Bowie Real Estate Market Study - 20715
- 12/18/07 01:10 AM
Things are looking very bleak for Bowie home sellers in the 20715 zipcode this month, based on statistics for November 2007 and these graphs of the years real estate activity.
Bowie Units sold: Down 35.71% from November 2006
Bowie Days on Market: Up 42.47% from November 2006
Bowie Median sold price: Down 2.88% from 2006
During the same timeframe, we have seen the inventory of active listings grow, while the number of sold properties has, at best, remained fairly consistent - ranging from 16 in September to 42 in June. The absorption rate for the most recent month was less than 10%, with an estimated … (2 comments)
margaret woda: Welcome to Fort Meade!
- 12/12/07 03:57 AM
Included in Your Online Relocation Package for Anne Arundel County, Maryland - Home of Fort George G. Meade, NSA, Northrop Grumman, BWI, and the U.S. Naval Academy.
So you have orders in hand for Fort Meade! Let me be one of the first to welcome you to Maryland. I'm sure you have already checked out the website for Fort Meade, so I won't attempt to tell you about the base or its services. Instead, let me tell you about the surrounding area and five critical steps for Fort Meade-area home buyers. You will find Fort Meade conveniently located between Baltimore, Maryland, and … (10 comments)
Gambrills, Maryland, is probably best known for the Village of Waugh Chapel, the relatively new commercial center prominently located on Route 3 between Bowie and Baltimore - about 15 minutes from Annapolis to the East and 10 minutes from Fort Meade to the West. Washington D.C. is just a 30 minute commute. The Village of Waugh Chapel has put Gambrills on the map, or certainly in people's consciousness, with 425,000 sq. ft. of retail space, 400 condos, two office buildings and several restaurants. Until the Village of Waugh Chapel was built, Gambrills was a relatively sleepy community nestled between Crofton and Odenton, and … (0 comments)
margaret woda: Me-Me'd Again, in Maryland
- 12/01/07 06:06 PM
Krista Fuchs sent me the nicest note, tagging me for a me-me and thanking me for encouraging her as a Newbie. My initial inclination was to beg off, since I've been me-me'd before and had a book me-me plus Adam's extensive interview for Sunday Bloggy Sunday. What more could I possibly say that you haven't already heard about me? But her note was so nice, I couldn't say "no"...
So here are five perfectly irrelevant things about me that have somehow missed the earlier reveals: 1. I won my first golf tournament at nine and golfed competitively 'til I was about 18, winning a number … (25 comments)
margaret woda: Gambrills MD Real Estate Market Update - October 2007
- 11/18/07 09:26 AM
This is the fourth local real estate market update for October 2007 I've prepared in as many days, and things are more optimist in Gambrills thatn some other nearby areas. I say that because statistics released by MRIS, the regional multiple listing system, indicate that Days on Market for a property in Gambrills is down significantly from last year - Over 32%! Additionally, the number of units sold in October 2007 remained seven, the same as last October.
Unfortunately, the average sold price in Gambrills is down almost 10% from last year and the median sold price is down overe 40%. But this … (1 comments)
margaret woda: Davidsonville Real Estate Market Update - October 2007
- 11/17/07 08:21 AM
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it's certainly true when you look at Davidsonville real estate statistics in the form of a graph or chart. This shows the sold properties each month, alongside the listing inventory. It's not a very pretty picture for home sellers, is it?
As ugly as this appears, there ARE homes selling. Just this week, closing occurred for my listing on Blandford Way in Wynnewood Subdivision. The property listed, sold and settled in LESS THAN 60 DAYS. And, I might add, the combined sale price and closing cost subsidy were higher than … (2 comments)
margaret woda: Crofton Real Estate Market Update - October 2007
- 11/16/07 01:43 AM
There is good news to report about the Crofton real estate market! Statistics released by MRIS, the regional multiple listing system for this area, indicate that homes took less time to sell in October 2007 than they did in the same month last year. Days on Market were down 11.54% to 69. Additionally, 42 homes sold in the 21114 zipcode last month - 7.69% more than October 2006. Take a look at these charts:
All the news wasn't good - the average sold price was down 14.48% to $327,400 from $382,846 in October of 2006. Unless you bought in the past year or two, it simply … (4 comments)
Yesterday, I had a reminder of just how important Realtors are to the people we serve.... how much we influence their lives. As my son and his wife proudly showed off the newly decorated nursery in anticipation of their first baby, it occurred to me that I had a role in this moment beyond that of being a mother or grandmother. What if I had not sent them new listings every Sunday last fall, so they could check out homes on their Sunday bike rides? It was a newly listed property, so the home they now live in would not have been advertised. What if … (66 comments)
margaret woda: Last Day to Vote on Posh'd!
- 11/02/07 04:49 PM
Edited 11/30/07 - Voting ends today! Just 2 weeks after going "live", my new outside blog has been Posh'd! Posh'd is actually a website featuring different blogsites each month that were selected for "breaking the mold and making real estate sites on the web more fun for everyone." Take a look... they're all very different from each other. (And many of the BEST ones, I think, seem to come from Real Estate Tomato!) This month, there are 15 sites you can vote on, including mine (FocusOnCrofton.com - Left column, 3rd down from the top ) and the blogsites of other ActiveRainers Rick and Inez Garcia, Art Wagner, Diane Aurit and … (30 comments)
If you use the School Locator on my website, you’ll only get part of the story. Today’s school assignments may or may not be an accurate reflection of which Crofton-area school your child will attend in 2008–2009. With the construction of a new elementary school on Nantucket Road (now referred to as Gambrills Elementary, although the school is located in Crofton), you can expect to see shuffling in some school boundaries next year.
Redistricting is a lengthy process that takes into account many factors including overcrowding in existing schools, neighborhood boundaries, and assignments for middle and … (8 comments)
Thinking of selling your Crofton home in Spring? If so, it's more important than ever for you to pull your green thumb out of your pocket and take care of these Fall Garden Must-Do's. They will reward you with a beautiful lawn and garden when the growing season begins in Spring - just in time to put your home on the market! You could say that spring curb-appeal begins today!
1. Bulbs - Now is the season for planting your spring-flowering bulbs, such as tulips and daffodils. It's also time to lift or "harvest" tender bulbs from your garden for next season, including … (12 comments)
margaret woda: No Blog is Complete Until...
- 10/30/07 05:06 PM
SPELL-CHECK. Do you know who invented spell-check? I, for one, would like to send him or her a nice hand-written thank you note. Spell-check is sort of an on-line dictionary that saves us from ourselves by catching our typos in MS Word documents or articles posted on ActiveRain and other web sites or blogs. On ActiveRain, spell-check is the last item on the right side of your top toolbar when you're typing your blog. Just click on the little ABC, and it will activate spell-check. A red squiggly line will appear under any mis-spelled words. Then you can correct your typo by placing your … (39 comments)
Real Estate and community information for home buyers and sellers, military transferees, and rookie agents in the greater Crofton area, including Annapolis, Bowie, Davidsonville, Fort Meade, Gambrills, Joint Base Andrews, Millersville, Odenton, and the U.S. Naval Academy.
You wouldn't be the first to say that I'm just lucky... and there's good reason to say that, based on my first experience as a real estate agent in Crofton, Maryland. 
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