So I emailed homethinking.com support with a simple question: "How do you get your sales data?" I received this response:

Many thanks for your email Pike.
 
Basically, we try to notice a Realtor is representing a property by monitoring public data, and then we check the county records to see if the house ended up selling. But that method can be prone to errors in some parts of the nation where the county record data may not be updated in a timely manner.
 
Also, you can change anything on your profile via a free a tool that lets you manage your listings activity and change those that are selling to sold.
 
Claim your profile here (it's free):
http://www.homethinking.com/realtorcheckprofile.action?realtorId=931934&claimType=basic&routing=profile
 
And then you'll be taken to an area where you can change your activity.
 
If there is anything I can do to help, just let me know and my apologies once again.
 
Best.
Niki
 
Niki Scevak - Founder
Homethinking LLC
_________________________________________
phone: (646) 257-4099 | fax: (646) 224-6950
post: PO Box 4668 #9550, New York NY 10163

I find it interesting that Niki apologizes (again?), though I don't make a complaint. Do they receive complaints often enough that they assume any email from an agent is a complaint? Is she aware I am an agent? I did not send my question through my business email. Perhaps she found me on active rain...

Hold on...wait a minute....just a second....

Yes Niki Scevak is on Active Rain. Or was; it doesn't seem she has used the site since 2007. I don't think this is how she may have discovered I am an agent. A simple google search for "Pike Porter" would have put the question to rest. I did find that several agents ask buyers and sellers to read reivews of them on homethinking.com. Some agents find it useful. I also found this Active Rain blog post from September 7th, 2006:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/7316/what-the-heck-were-they-homethinking-com-with-this-turkey-

So, in the process of getting my new agency updated in the bing.com local listings, I come across two reviews of my two largest competitors in Chittenden County, Lang and Hickok Boardman. "Interesting," think to myself suspiciously, "who reviews real estate agencies on yelp.com or judysbook.com?" Judysbook.com, who even heard of judysbook.com?

Well, Greg S. had and made it a point to review Lang Associates, now Lang Mclaurghy Spera, on August 20th, 2006.

It was the only review he ever wrote--ever--no restaurant reviews, book reviews, movie reviews--none of the reviews people ordinarily post for the world to see. But he went out of his way to write a review of his real estate agency. Huh.

I'm no less suspicious of the Coldwell Banker Hickok Boardman's review found on yelp.com Sybil C.'s review even included an upload of the company logo. Now that is one dedicated patron.

But who knows, perhaps the companies had nothing whatsoever to do with the posting of these reviews. There was a website out there at one point in time that tried to rate agents. The site accumulated some, very little, sales data and ranked agents by some formula. It so happened that most of the data was sales from Century 21, my former agency. I was it's top ranked agent. While I was pleased to see positive rating, I was a bit miffed that a website would rate anyone or anything, the same system could give an agent an equally poor rating for a similar random set of data.

Wait...Hold on...I wanna check something...Yes, the site is still online: homethinking.com. Unfortunatly, I'm no longer the top ranked agent...but I am still ranked as a Century 21 agent based on my performance 2 years ago. Good to see they are reviewing their data set frequently.

You can't believe everything you read online.

I'm very pleased to announce the establishment of Castle Porter Real Estate, a socially consious real estate company that strives to reduce costs to sellers, provide financial incentives to buyers, offer superior commissions to its agents, and provide charitable gifts to local not-for-profit organizations by embracing technological efficiency and by avoiding outdated marketing methods and unnecessary overhead. Castle Porter Real Estate will be the real estate agency Vermonters turn to when looking for the single most professional, cost effective, and socially responsible real estate agency in Vermont.

We are located at 52 Elmwood Avenue right in downtown Burlington. Stop in and say hi--or leave a note--its been a busy Spring. Of course you can also find us at Burlington's most awesomest, down-right kick-ass real estate web site this side of the great divide.

In coming weeks we should even have business cards to give away.

So I could be wrong, it's happened before. Or I could be impatient, or paranoid, or the casualty of a internet glitch. But I don't think so.

I think I've been black-listed from making comments on BloodhoundBlog.com.

Which is kind of funny, cuz if I am correct (and please correct me if I'm wrong) I've black-listed because of  a comment I made on a posting of Greg Swan's about the censorship of a blogger.

I don't think it was my correcting him about the definition of the term "censorship,"--though he does seem confused on that point--that got me banned, not do I think it was pointing out that what he would call satire and irony most adults would call juvenile and asinine.

No, it was simply my response to another poster who asked if anything was happening with a suit against ePerks. "Nah, the ugly duckling got his feathers ruffled," I responded. I thought nothing of it until yesterday, when I went back to Greg's blog post. My comment was gone, missing, as if it never was written.

"Huh. Strange," I thought, and proceeded to attempt a few more posts on his blog, and a few other blogs. I also attempted to add my blog to the bloodhoundblog.com list of real estate blogs.

No luck.

Apparently, and again I may be wrong, Greg Swan can dish the smack, but can't take it himself. Who wudda thought him a softy? or a bad sport? or a hypocrite, or just really insecure?

I took a sabbatical for much of 2008 to pursue some art hobbies. The time was relaxing. As much as I love my job, it was a bit tough getting back into the swing of things. Since January 1st, I have one new listing and one pending contract, and three serious buyers, one who has put an offer on a home and still negotiating, another who is ready to make an offer today, and a third who just met with me and her loan officer to review the best way to make an offer on a condo. I'm glad to get back into active work mode so quickly but forgot how much time out of the day, showings, offers, inspections, etc can take out of a day.

During my sabbatical I did get my broker's lisence. I have also redone my website Burlington Vermont Homes and Condos and have another new site in the works that should be unvieled at the end of the month. We still deciding what the new site name will be.

I've reviewed the stats for Chittenden County and Burlington for 2008 and home prices were up about 3% over 2007. Home sales were down, but it is good to know that homes are keeping their value.

Happy new year. Make it a prosperouse one.

Pike

All set! www.vtopenhouse.com is on its way to its new home with nvbr/vrein. I wonder if nvbr will provide data feeds for the open houses so that other sites can display them. It would help buyers and would help real estate agents. In the mean time, I'll continue to season. www.openhousevermont.com.

I googled open houses in Chittenden County in both Firefox and Internet Explorer and the results were interesting, and different. In Firefox point2 takes first place and my site takes 2nd. In IE Hickok Boardman is first, Point2 is second, and I take fourth after www.HomesandLand.com. Yesterday when searching google on IE, my www.openhousevermont.com was second after CBHB. Oh the fickle fate of google rank.

I'm glad that the sale has been resolved.

These last few months I've read some interesting research summaries regarding buyer psychology. One little tidbit: In a market like we now have with an abundance of inventory and thus choices for the buyer--a buyer's market--buyers are actually more likely to be dissatisfied with their purchase then buyers buying in a seller's market. Why? Because the wealth of options in a buyer's market creates a paralysis of choices. With so many options, it is harder to chose just one. The choice they make, when they finally do pick one, allows buyers to reflect on their purchase and say "we should have gone with..." "if only we had purchased...." A seller's market offer buyer's far fewer choices and thus far fewer reasons to second-guess thier decisions. Consequently, they are more content with thier decision. A second interesting tidbit of buyer discontent: While the common reasoning says buy the smallest, least expensive house in the most desirable neighborhood which will allow buyers to build more equity than purchasing the largest home, buyers are usually more satisfied later by buying the nicest home in less desirable neighborhoods. Why? Because a home is more than a business decision. Though we don't admit it, and may not consciously believe it, we do compare ourselves with our neighbors--Veblen's keeping up with the Jones theory. We are less content being the small fish than being the big fish. Huh.

This week was an interesting week to say the least. I was forced outside my comfort zone in the tasks i was asked to perform. First i was asked to get the Grand Lists from the town of Shelburne, South Burlington and the state. I was kind of going in blind to this task because i had no idea what a grand list was. What Pike was looking for primarly with those grand lists was the sales data for specific regions. The second task i was asked to perform was to call local agents to see if they had any sellers that would be willing to lease a condo for 3-6 months. What i had to do was first run a search for vacant condos, and then contact the listing agents. I had been primarily doing e-marketing work before this week, but i really enjoyed interacting with actual agents this week. I'm still learning and still kind of naive about the industry as a whole, but i look forward to oncoming weeks to expand my knowledge of the real estate industry

Since my last entry i have been primarily been focusing on the marketing aspect of real estate through the internet. I had no idea how much marketing came into play when trying to sell a house. Recentley me and Pike constructed a farming campaign to promote his new listing on 27 lupine st. What the famring campaign hoped to accomplish was to create awareness and exposure to the new listing. I was told it was a rare chance someone would call because of the flyer, but the flyers couldn't hurt. It is small things like this that i had no idea about. To be honest i thought i had a small idea of what the real estate market was all about, but after a couple weeks i realized i truly had no idea. I look forward to the weeks ahead i have with Pike to learn more about the real estate industry. The most enjoyable part for me is working with different people on a daily basis, and having to keep a keen eye on current events within the industry. Until next time, i'll talk to ya soon

Last year was a great year for me: over 4.6 million in production, 19 homes closed, #8 agent in our company, number #4 in Chittenden County, a top Century 21 agent in Northern New England. Last year I also donated to about 1/2 dozen organizations, not including underwriting VPR which I think of as advertizing. The Women's Rape Crisis Center got $500 in 2007 and it was my most satisfying donation. Burlington Community Health Center, Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, a few others I can't remember at the moment also received $500 or an in-kind donation of $500.

Burlington had a horrible rape and murder 2 years ago: a UVM student. It was discovered she was missing when she didn't show up for a dinner with her parents who were visiting for parent's weekend. I imagine what those hours and days were like for her parents who, before they found her body, knew to expect the worst but sneeded to hope for the best; I image what those last few hours and minutes were like for the student; they are all haunting imaginings.

So this year I'm focusing my donations on the WRCC and bumping them up a bit. I'm donating $500 for every transacation in 2008 to the WRCC. If I keep even with last year, that'll be $10,000. I'm hoping to donate $20,000. I've only got $19,500 to go. I'll let you know how it goes.