My biggest complaint is the almost non-existence of Realtors on the list. I'll be frank, some of you live in communities with real estate professionals who really work social media hard. So far, northwest indiana has a bunch of real estate professionals that may have signed up for a site, but don't use them and don't engage.
Jeff and Grace Safrin are the exception to this of course, they get it. A few mortgage people get it, but all in all our industry too is under-represented by actual social types ... and more often than not people who joined because someone told them they needed a profile.
One perfect example, is that in the Top Ten Active Rain members in Porter County, only three are RE agents. Now what in the world does that tell you? Sorry to be negative, but it's time for real estate professionals to step it up in the Region.
Let's be honest, this was a real question submitted by a reader, but they knew my thoughts on the matter. YES, there has never been a better time to purchase a home in Northwest Indiana. Real estate values have completed a small correction over the last two years, and are actually leveled or even increasing in some areas.
I wrote that post a couple hours ago on my personal outside blog, Northwest Indiana Mortgages and Real Estate, and now the Case Schiller Home Price Index is released substantiating the same:
Report shows home prices in metro markets were down 18.1% last year, which was a reduction in the slide of values, and an indicator of recovery and leveling off. GOOD NEWS!
A few years back I was a lot more active here on Active Rain, working with some great real estate professionals and learning every step of the way. Thanks to all of you who have been true friends. I am spending most of my time on mortgage lending these days, although still building a home once in a while. Here is a list of links to my mortgage sites, most still in fledling stage but I'd like to do your loan.
During the last campaign cycle Indiana politicians were seen to be using a little bit of social media, a blog here and there, and I think a few of them even played around with twitter. Over the last month I've noticed that a few more have migrated to twitter, so I went on a hunt this morning for twitter profiles for politicians. If you have more that I've missed, please submit in comments and I'll update.
I'll do a separate post on party officials on twitter, yes both parties.
Alright Indiana tweeps, I'm sure I am missing some, or maybe this post will get some of the existing political crop to at least hold their own names so squatters don't grab them.
Many politicians start out assigning their social media work to a staffer, and although this may work on facebook and blogs, twitter really demands a little bit of personality. Staffer generated tweets are pretty quickly dismissed as broadcast media and not worth engaging. A word of recommendation, if you are an elected official at any level in Indiana and see the potential to engage your constituents on twitter, do so yourself. Even one personal tweet a day and you'll be amazed the following.
You may think you're busy, but last I checked Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove are both personally tweeting from their blackberries, you aren't more busy than they are.
Here's what I found today, I'll keep comments to a minimum so you can read quickly:
School Closings due to extreme cold weather - one editorial suggesting the schools are waiting too long to let people know, we all knew it would be 2 below this morning and Valpo Schools waited till 5 a.m. to decide. Kudos to Portage and Chesterton for calling it early.
Sorry if the whole list is too busy to read, leave links to great news and posts related to NW Indiana in the comments section too. We welcome the extra input.
I'll be the first to admit I was a bit ticked when I tried to read the ranking and found that I needed a subscription, just seemed "old world" paradigm to me. I've tried to interact with Howey a couple times, but he seems to favor a few of you guys in Indy over hyper local reporting from the Region. When we posted a series of three articles on the Gary Distressed Unit Board filing, with a writer in the room posting live, he seemed to find the Indy Star reporting 24 hours later better.
Now, what the scoop on this article by Advance Indiana and peppering Howey with ridicule for his Power 50 list? I'm sure there's a back story, love to hear it. How about a Hoosier Access poll on most influential people in Indiana Josh? My nominations: Mitch Daniels, Pat Bauer, Pete Visclosky, Mike Pence, G'wood Mayor Henderson for huge annex grab, Chair of Distressed Unit Board Kitchel, CEO of Mittal Steel, Todd Rokita (where's he going next?) ... Just thinking out loud.
First let me say thanks to those that attended, I think we had 15 total and next time we'll easily see 20 plus if the weather if a bit better. To those that attended, please feel free to comment liberally on ideas and thoughts on where we can collaborate.
and yours truly with way too many blogs to list here but my first one was Daltonsbriefs
we were missing at least 8 others that couldn't make it last night, so the next meeting really should be great!
A great time to fellowship and get to know each other, if you missed this one, please try to make the next one, which we'll probably try to get set in March. Some things we decided to work on in the future in no particular order:
For those that use google reader, it's awful fun to connect using the gmail chat feature and then whenever we "share" a post all our chat friends can see those shares. My gmail is stevesynergy (at) gmail (dot) com ... feel free to request chatting so we can all get connected inside of reader. Obviously if you use a reader, subscribe to all the other NW Indiana blogs
Many of us have attempted to compile lists of Northwest Indiana bloggers, I'll update my list here and we all agreed to attempt to stay updated and add new bloggers to our lists for blogrolls links. More important though than blog rolls, which don't score super high with google ... is actual text links in blog posts. When possible link to fellow region bloggers.
I have the list of email addresses and am pondering a google group, I know it's old school bulletin board, but would allow us to communicate ideas for collaboration. Let me know if you like this idea.
There was a lot of talk about twitter and other social media platforms. If you decide to use twitter and are posting about NW Indiana, highly recommend using the #nwindiana hashtag and then Twitter Search ... a good place to check daily for region posts and conversations.
If I've missed stuff, leave in comments and I'll raise up as updates to this post.
This Thursday at 6 pm. at Golden Technologies 2402 Beech St. Valpo No sales pitches, just a chance to meet everyone
Please come ... and also help us promote it. (use #nwindiana hashtag if using twitter)
I know that there are a bunch of real estate bloggers in NW Indiana, a lot more than when I used to be real involved here on AR, please join us if you can make it.
Stock market rally in first quarter to 12,000 Dow ... with big stories dominated by mergers and acquisitions
Even though Federal Government gave out cash to GM and Chrysler, both will file bankruptcy in 2nd quarter, with GM being purchased by Ford and Chrysler by Toyota. This will break the union contracts and allow steel, textiles, and other union dominated industries to begin re-organizing labor contracts.
Mortgage rates will hang at 5% till end of March, with refinance boom helping dodge Alt-A reset crisis, but then start going up as "economic recovery" news causes inflation to become more certain
Oil will go back up to $80 by June 2009, the dollar will strengthen though. The US will lead the global recovery thus the dollar strength. Oil demand issues will recover traction thus the oil strength.
Obama will be tied in knots, one the one side his radical left support, on the other the great middle of America that only heard "change" ... he will accomplish very little in 2009 and 2010 ... which frankly will be good for America
Governments all over the country will actually have to cut budgets, and cut deeply. This will be the first time in decades that budgets actually get cut. Some politicians will lose in 2010 merely because they couldn't deliver pork for the first time.
Hyper local blogger collaboration will hurt traffic to individual bloggers, with a rush to get added to collaborative projects. Monetization will only work in collaborative aggregates, with traffic and advertising connections. See circa 2006 model Northwest Indiana bloggers, old news. I better move or I'm dead in the water too.
Massive unemployment will actually be good for the economy, with consulting and home based contractors niche growing substantially. Companies will hire the work they actually need and leave the extras to the side as unecessary overhead. The fast and connected will not only survive but grow, the lazy and entitled will be left far far behind.
What are your predictions for 2009? Disagree with me, cool comment or email me, the engagement is more important than the prophesy.
Some of you know I'm working on a book project, A Conservative on the 2009 Housing Recovery, and today specifically the second chapter which details commonly held myths about housing. Here's a bit of Myth Number One - would appreciate any feedback positive or negative.
Chapter Two- 10 Myths about housing
Myth One - It would be better for more families to rent their homes
This is a catagorical insult to the American ideal. We may as well suggest that Americans would be better off if only landowners voted, or if the government controlled all health care, or any other list of nonsensical mental excursions that end up in socialism or worse. The AMERICAN DREAM has been and must continue to be that a family can own their own home. For a few transitory households renting may make some sense at times and in certain seasons. But for the most part every family should have the opportunity to purchase a home. President Bush announced goals of attaining record levels of homeownership in excess of 78% of all households, these were great goals and his leadership should not be faulted merely because housing values have slid. It's a good idea to save for retirement, and just because many IRA's and 401K's have reduced in value due to stock values, this does not mean people should stop saving for retirement.
I hesitate to say this so strongly for fear that do-gooders will then suggest that the government needs to step in to make ownership happen by legislation or regulation. No, no, and a thousands times NO! Families want to buy a home, they want to live out the American Dream of ownership and wealth creation. They don't need the government to tell them to do it or manipulate the markets to make it happen. Builders want to build for first time buyers, and one of their largest obstacles is the government in the form of impact fees and zoning that combats affordable housing. Lenders want to provide mortgages for first time buyers, and help them fix their credit if need be, once again government gets mostly in the way. We cannot legislate the American Dream, isn't that the whole point of our 230 year experiment? The American Dream exists where familes and individuals make decisions for themselves. Government needs to stay out of the way, so they can decide for themselves.
Almost every family I have met over my last 20 years in this industry would be better off owning a home than renting. First, our tax system favors home ownership in that all mortgage interest can be deducted, rent cannot. Second, every payment made in a normal 30 year mortgage helps that family accumulate a little more equity and thus household wealth. Third, the self-confidence and pride instilled in a family when they own their own home is patently American in its ideals and culture. We want to have our own place, a place that is ours and no one else's. Sure there were many families that I met that couldn't quite afford a home yet, or had some credit issues that we needed to work to clean up, or needed totally different jobs to make it all work. But in every case where a family wanted to do the work, to be disciplined to save some money, pick up a second job, contact creditors and work things out, homeownership was possible.
When we fall for the liberal tact of "some just aren't smart enough or astute enough" to own a home, we start down a slippery slope of "us and them" that is not American. There are many families that cannot afford a $500,000 home, but they may well be able to purchase a $65,000 home after six months of saving for down payment and cleaning up credit problems.
One last comment, to my conservative friends reading along, who think I'm being hypocritical using tax law as a reason to buy a home. I will agree that for the most part tax laws should be simplified and flattened. If during this process one day the mortgage interest deduction is eliminated, while taxes are actually reduced and flattened, I will be supportive. I understand that favoring one consumption decision over another is still government manipulation and intervention. Today though, the tax laws do strongly favor purchasing a home over renting, and if we merely eliminate the tax benefit for some environmental or culture correctness that suggests that more people should rent, I won't back it.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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