Wellington Homes and More...

Lake Ida Delray Beach Florida Living- New Listing For Sale!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:08:36 -0600

Lake Ida Delray Beach Florida Living- New Listing For Sale!

598 NW 45th Street in Delray Beach is now for sale and this is NOT a short sale. If you are looking for a brand new home in a well established secluded and private part of popular Delray Beach- this is it! While the lot and the exterior of the building is not brand new everything inside is. You will not be disappointed.

This home was originally built in 1979 when this neighborhood was being established however, the owner gutted the interior including even the dry wall in order to turn this home into a modern and new home.

Attention to detail is an understatement for this home.

But first, let me tell you, this home is a couple of minutes away from Lake Ida, one of the most popular lakes in Palm Beach County. It is also just a few minutes from the best beaches in the entire state of Florida. Delray Beach and Boynton Beach are popular beach destinations along with the very well known Delray Beach boardwalk which offers great eateries, on the water restaurants and anitque shopping. There is easy access to I95 and to the Florida Turnpike so you will be close to anywhere you need to go to get to work and activities.

When you look down the street where the house is; you will see large open green spaces and wide roads. There is plenty of room for entertaining and living the South Florida lifestyle.

The wooden floors are made of imported Brazilian Cherry Wood in rich colors and custom feel. The bathrooms have all been finished in luxury tile with added details such as upscale and modern lighting. All of the fixtures in the bathrooms are brand new. No one has lived in this home since it has been renovated.

You won't need to do a thing in the kitchen - it is ready to be used for cooking and dining. All of the appliances are brand new. The counters have all been finished in granite tile. A new island was made and placed in the kitchen for the dishwasher and the new stainless steel dual sinks. All of the cabinets are custom made with top of the line real and solid wood.

There is a wonderful sun room for outdoor entertaining that opens up the the hot tub in the secluded back yard.

If you are a first time homebuyer or are looking for a second home and you want a home that is ready to move into- you will find that this house is the right fit for you. We can have a fast closing because this house is NOT a short sale. You could close in as little as a week so don't hesitate to call us for your private viewing of this home at 561-753-0135.

Asking only $249,777.

Enjoy The Show:

T o view Florida Short Sales- Click here . We know Palm Beach County Short Sales and Port St Lucie Florida Short Sales and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your home in Palm Beach County Florida : Call us today.

Can Short Sales Really Be Automated Like Cookie Cutters- One Size Fits All?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:42:33 -0600

Can Short Sales Really Be Automated Like Cookie Cutters and become like one size fits all? I don't think so. Real estate agents along with NAR made their voices heard to the powers that be in Congress and in the banking institutions. Of course, it is a pain to not have guidelines and to be negotiating short sales in wild, wild west fashion but on the other hand the cream rises to the top so the agents with the talent of negotiating skills and the gift of listening and communication skills rise above the rest and have come to have very successful short sale businesses, they close their short sales and save many homeowners from foreclosure.

Be careful what you scream for, be careful what you wish for- it may just come back to bite you.

Let's look at what is really behind the automation so widely being sought after by agents and the NAR these days in regards to short sales:

California based Equator who changed their name from REOTRANS- has created and is implementing the very first short sale automation process for a large lender. The company will not come out and say in public who the lender is who they made this process for to begin with but anyone doing any number of short sales can see the obvious connection with Bank of America telling us that they are automating their short sale process and also with us already being given files to place into this automated system.

The company called Equator says the key to a successful short sale are:

accessibility,
responsiveness,
communication,
fulfillment

Equator says that by large lenders using their new automated system that the homeowner will have 24/7 access to their file and will be able to directly upload required documentation. They will also be given real time updates electronically.

They claim their system will comply with all governmental regulations and compliance, quick fulfillment times, faster turnaround times and will automate the decision making process.

Now that all sounds great and dandy but whenever you take out the human factor of emotions, making exceptions and taking the negotiations to another level you are not going to get the same approval ratios.

One size does not fit all. I am seeing the writing on the wall. You have several problems with this system even before they implement it.

First, you have to get all the processors and negotiators trained on the system. We are getting files already in this system but the customer service people at BofA and the negotiators are not even trained yet in using the same system. So chalk that one up to the learning curve.

More importantly when everyone starts to depend on an automated system there is less room for the human decision making process like for exceptions to the rule. We can not even count the number of times that a file did not 'fit' the system but we got the short sale approved anyways. When people depend on an automated system they tend to answer, " that is the way it is," or "sorry, the system says they are not approved," etc.

While real estate agents are screaming to streamline the short sale process homeowners may be pushed into foreclosure rather than doing short sale work outs just because some system says they are not approved for a short sale.

So at the end of the day the result may be faster approval times but a higher rate of rejections.

Can Short Sales Really Be Automated Like Cookie Cutters- One Size Fits All? by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Duplicate Content- Should You or Shouldn't You?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:32:32 -0600

Duplicate Content- It All Depends!

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about the truth about the duplicate content, you can click here to read it if you missed it. If you have any questions about duplicate content, this is a must read.

Remember that it always depends! What is your goal? Everything you do on line should be weighed and aligned with what your online marketing goals are. What works for one person may not work for another.

In that post I have a video with Matt Cutts directly from Google who clarifies all your concerns about duplicate content.

There are a few things that you need to take into consideration that go beyond my post about duplicate content:

1. The Google spiders will choose what they consider "THE BEST" of your content to bring to the searchers.

2. Duplicate content does dilute your link power which Matt Cutts talks about this in the video so if you are concerned you need to watch the video.

3. Links won't go as deep into your sites if you are having to divide them up.

And last but not least- you DO NOT get penalized for duplicate content.

How does your link power get diluted? If you have several websites and blogs and you have 20 links- you are dividing those links up between let's say two sites- you are giving each site only 10 links instead of benefiting one site with 20 links.

The other issue is that if you have 20 good links and you have to divide them up between your sites you are not able to go as deep as you need to go to bring your pagerank up where you may wish it to go.

The choice is up to you. Do you want to have a strong website with links to your site that will steadily climb to the top or do you want the quick hit and run type presence where your posts go to the top of page one for your keywords one day and then fall off the face of Google the next?

Matt Cutts talks about how you can point your links to one URL and tell Google that this is the site you want Google search engines to rank and pay attention to. There is a lot of information on how to do this on the Google Webmaster website.

So what is the best way for you to take advantage of duplicate content but yet make your website or your blog the main focus?

Use your Active Rain Blog to write your posts on and then link to your website and outside blog from your Active Rain blog. The search engines love Active Rain. Use this to your advantage. If you are not using Active Rain to link to your site or blog you are really missing out on an easy way to have your site rise to the top of the search engines.

Learn more about by taking my SEO TO THE TOP WEBINAR- Register today, next session begins January 13! Start the new year off empowered to bring your blog and website to the top.

Duplicate Content- Should You or Shouldn't You? by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Wellington's Sign Restrictions

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:28:10 -0600

Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Wellington's Sign Restrictions

Finally the Village of Wellington town counsel has decided to visit these way old fashioned rules on anti business here in Wellington Florida. It is about time! But even though there is some friendliness towards business, there is also continued restrictions and more...

So in the last town counsel meeting the village town counsel members decided to loosen up these tight restrictions on businesses in Wellington being able to use signs to promote their business.

Banner signs have always been against the rules in Wellington Florida. But what a pain that was to businesses who are holding grand openings or just opened for business and don't have their permanent signs in yet. After all, you do have to order those permanent signs, they have to be approved by the leasing companies and the village code compliance before you can ever install them. So the village really does a new business a disservice by not allowing them to have a temporary banner ad.

Here is a photo of what our Wellington Florida McDonalds looks like. This is as big as the golden arches get to be in our town. It makes the town look uniform and like a town instead of a city. You will notice they do not have any signs on their building.

The village of Wellington just initiated a request for the use of banner ads for businesses in Wellington! YEAH! It is about time! They will be voting on the banner ad issue in 2 weeks. If you own a business in Wellington Florida please make sure you contact the village counsel members and show up to the meetings to let your voice be heard.

This is what our gas stations look like in Wellington Florida. The photo below this one shows you what one of our gas stations looks like from the road. You can hardly tell there is a gas station here and that makes us Wellington and I don't think any of us living here want to take away from this landscape but a small sign with prices would be very helpful to the residents here.

The proposed ordinance will also allow for window signage to cover up 50% of the glass. They are also proposing that you can have internal banners on the windows showing towards the exterior of your business. I can't imagine having all these restrictions to deal with when you are trying to run your business. Another part of the proposed ordinance will finally allow A-frame signs with the tenant names on them to help promote your business. Gas stations would also finally be allowed to post their prices which has always been banned in Wellington. While I understand how the village wants the town of Wellington to keep its' great look and feel, I would like to know the price of gas before I drive into the gas station! Gas stations would still not be allowed to do any promotions on their signage.

Equestrian Event Signage- There were different opinions from the counsel members as to restricting Equestrian even signs. They don't like that these signs are on public property either. That really makes no sense since the Village of Wellington benefits fro the income generated by Equestrian events. I wonder how mnay of these counsel people ever owned their own businesses? The counsel wants to make the Equestrian event signs, have them all uniform looking and post them for permanently with directional arrows on those signs to the events. One of the things that I like the most about the posting of the event signs is that it reminds me about the time and place of the events. Some of the members proposed giving the events permission to post the date and time of the event on directional temporary signs on the day of the event. Well, that is kind of like after the fact. That is inconvenient to the rest of us. One of the counsel members suggested putting a universal phone number on the permanent sign so you can call for the date and time of events. But that is also inconvenient because it is so much easier just to drive down the road and get reminded there is an event this weekend, that makes it front and center in your mind. When you have to remember to call you might even miss out on an event. Sometimes I think that the village counsel act like wannabe politicians who want to feel important and so they make up all this stuff that makes no sense making things more complicated than they need to be.

Commercial Signage- Most all the counsel members do not like the commercial real estate leasing signs that are popping up due to vacancies because of the economy. The mayor our town, Darrel Bowen even said that the commercial listing signs are, "ridiculous". While I agree that they are big and bulky I must stand by the land owners and leasing companies in being able to promote vacant spaces for lease. The Village of Wellington benefits from having businesses move into these vacant spaces so what is a little eye sore once in a while. It is not like these signs stay up year in and year out. It makes me wonder if any of these counsel members have ever owned their own businesses? If you are involved in commercial real estate leasing I would strongly suggest you to show up for the voting on these issues in 2 weeks to voice heard.

So make your voice be know, speak up, here is your chance to let the town counsel members know that you want to promote your business here in Wellington Florida!

Just A Note About What Is Up With Us...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:48:31 -0600

I only posted 2 posts to our blog last week. I have not gone anywhere and am working to get back into the swing of my routine. Both Nestor and I got sick about 3 weeks ago. We are still quite under the weather. I usually blog very late at night and over the past few weeks I have been falling asleep as I was blogging... not good!

At the same time as us getting sick which BTW- this is the first time we have been sick in several years- we started getting more calls than usual from our expired letter mailing program, past clients and referrals from local attorneys who send their short sale prospects to us. This was a very good problem to have and just getting the energy to talk to all these wonderful sellers, giving them our all- well, it was quite the challenge.

We also had 3 closings last week and then trying to save this Freddie Mac deal that we posted about- all the closings had issues and racing against time deadlines the short sale lenders place on our sellers- again, great problems to have- nothing to complain about- nevertheless, getting and maintaining the energy levels needed for all these tasks and situations even with our full time assistants was very difficult.

I am also running my SEO To The Top Webinar, Coaching and keeping up with our son's homeschool lessons and activities. I was almost thankful when my son also got sick so that I did not have to deal with the energizer bunny all day long on top of everything else.

We would do a couple of things, then had to lay down for 30 minutes, then do some more and repeat this process over and over again. Now we are detoxing our bodies to get all the junk out that is left behind when you get sick, building our immunity levels and staying away from crowds and shaking hands so that we don't get a relapse. Even the energy it takes to get well by preparing raw foods, teas, detox tonics, etc gets drained quickly!

I guess when you get past 50 it just may take longer to heal than when you are a spring chicken!

So hang in there with me- I am getting back to my routine of blogging- first I need to do some localism stuff for google juice then I will post the tutorials in between all of the local posts.

Thanks for reading!

Is Being A Real Estate Agent Holding You Back From The Mac?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:20:20 -0500

Back in August we dipped our toes into the waters of the mac world. We wanted to start out slow and easy so in case it was not going to be a good fit we could swing back over to the Windows PC world which we were in since we got out of DOS mode.

Little did we know that the dip would turn into a major plunge, diving right in the deep end! Wow were the most often said words in our office and home! One of our daughters had a mac laptop and we got one of our sons who started college one in August. Little did we know how the mac was going to rock our world.

So the teachers and trainers at our local Apple store know us very well by now since the Apple store has become our new 'college'. The first thing we highly recommend for anyone moving into the mac world to make sure you buy your mac from the Apple store and pay the $99 for one year of unlimited one on one sessions with trainers and teachers. This also includes unlimited group classes on everything mac and then some and also the business seminars are great.

Many real estate agents hold back from embracing the power and ease of the mac world because you can't get on the mls with mac. But you can. The mls is run on Windows IE. ( Don't use IE for anything but mls even on a pc).

Let me first tell you that mac users are complaining to mls vendors that their antiquity online is just unacceptable. Our mls told us that making the mac work with Firefox or Safari is the most requested item. The mls vendors say that they are working on getting the mls to work with Firefox and that should be available by the end of 2010. In the meantime you have several options for living in the mac world and still being able to access the mls.

You can do any of the following:

Use Bootcamp on the Mac- This is done when you first buy your mac. You install a licensed version of Windows 7. You run two operating systems on the mac. When you want to use IE you just boot up your mac in Windows.

I don't like this way because you have to constantly reboot your mac to go between operating systems and you also would have to buy the windows license.

Use Parallels for Mac- This is software that is the most common among agents to use. This is software that cost $79.99 for one user and $199.99 for up to 3 users. We have not tried this software yet. We are going to try this on one of our macs and continue to use Crossover with the other macs and see which ones is better for us. You have to have a Windows OS license to add it to Parallels.

Use Crossover Software- We are using Crossover right now. You can buy a Pro License for $69 and use it on multiple macs. The developers of Crossover keep working out bugs and making it a better product all the time. I like their customer service also. They get back with help tickets within a day.You do not need to buy any Microsoft Windows products or licenses with Crossover. Thus, this is the reason I like it the best.

Crossover mimics Windows. So when you open up IE, Crossover opens it up and you will see a windows screen within Crossover. It is really very nice because I have a rule for our staff and family- go in and get on the mls with Crossover then close out as soon as you are finished. This will train you not to use IE for other purposes and it will keep your mac safe.

Make sure you follow the following tips when using mls on Crossover- when you add on the IE browser you have to choose IE6 not 7. Also, we had an issue with printing because mls wants us to install those unsafe active x controls that mac does not like. The way around that for us was to use the pdf print format. So that works fine. The one irritating thing Nestor does not like is that the mls will freeze up if you leave the computer and come back too much later.

Use Teamviewer, Yuuguu or CrossLoop to access a pc remotely. Some agents keep a pc running with mls and then use the screen sharing to maneuver and use the mls on the pc from their mac. I have tried this and it is too slow for us. There is a short delay but it gets kind of irritating.

The last option is to keep a pc around to get on the mls with. This is great for agents who are not having to use their laptops to get on the mls out in the field. This gets very irritating because once you get used to mac speed and simplicity you can really tell the difference. We kept our pcs because I have not had the time to move files to external hard drives and I chose not to do a file transfer as many of our files may no longer be needed. I will take my time sorting through the old files.

So you see, there are several ways to get into the mac world even as a real estate agent who has to rely on archaic mls systems.

FTC Disclosure: This is my own opinion. This is not meant to be professional advice. I am not getting paid by Apple to blog about my opinion nor do I derive any benefit from so doing that I know of. If I do ever get any gain in any way or fashion because of writing this post, that is not my intent.

Is Being A Real Estate Agent Holding You Back From The Mac? by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Freddie Mac- SOS- HOMEOWNER Needs Your Help!!!!! Part II

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:43:42 -0500

Freddie Mac still does not come clean. They keep passing the buck. They keep making up excuses as to why they can not even just give one simple answer. They make empty promises.

Read Freddie Mac- Does Anyone There Know How To Read- Part I, to understand the history of this short sale file.

We have never lost a short sale due to our negotiations. Every listing we take goes through an intake evaluation to get everyone on the same page, to make sure the seller understands what a short sale is, to analyze the seller's commitment to the short sale process and to evaluate the chance for success of the short sale.

We have a 100% closing ratio because we do not give up on our sellers no matter what monster shows up. This would be the very first file that we will lose to a short sale rejection.

So here is the update to what is going on:

The homeowner wants to know why her short sale was rejected when she meets all of Freddie Mac's guidelines.

The seller has been on the phone with Freddie Mac every day trying to get an answer.

She finally reaches a supervisor who promises to help her find her answer. All she wants to know to begin with is why she was rejected. She has now gone through 3 employees at Freddie Mac with not one of them giving her the reason for the rejection. The last person says to her:

This is directly from our seller as to how she is being treated:

"Freddie Mac- Terence-who said "trust me. someone will call you back TODAY" who said "I'm going to call you back in a few minutes" -NOTHING

When I was on the phone with him- he kept putting me on hold- he told me he had e-mailed several people at Freddie and Chase- "I promise to get you an answer. I have all these people working on it and someone will definitely call you today"

There seems to be a pattern at work here- The 3 FM reps we had contact with- Katie Givens, Ron Williamson, Terence ( don't have last name on hand) Upon first contact- appear to be willing to do their job- helping the customer- but somewhere along the line- they are instructed not to release the information. They probably can't officially refuse ,so they are told to stall, make promises, never call back and such tactics.
The first time I spoke to Ron, he said he would have an answer by the next day. After he did not call I called him, left a message. Nothing

Katie- same thing"

The good news is that we are still in the fight. Freddie Mac was quick to follow through with the foreclosure and our seller's house was sold back to Freddie the other day. But our seller's attorney is going to be filing an objection and will be able to get the foreclosure reversed because Freddie Mac never notified him of the sale date. This will buy us anywhere from 3 weeks to several months time to resolve the issue and maybe be able to get this short sale approved.

We have 4 offers sitting here from buyers who want this house. This is such a shame to have this property ever go to foreclosure when buyers who are ready, willing and able want to move into this vacant property straight away. It makes absolutely no sense. You have to read the first post I wrote about this case in order to understand where we have come from and where we are trying to go.

In the first post we wrote about how we notified all the senators in New York and Florida. We have alerted all the media to this but for some reason they are not interested in this news story!

The homeowner has been on the phone for hours every day with Freddie Mac. First Freddie Mac says that Chase is the one that needs to tell the seller why she was rejected. Well, our negotiator at Chase ( who happens to be a Freddie Mac short sale trainer) told us she never got a reason why. She was shocked as we were that it was rejected by Freddie. Freddie never supplied the reason to Chase. So our seller asks, who turned down the short sale- Freddie or Chase? Freddie says it was Freddie who turned down the short sale. So our seller says to Freddie, "you are the ones that turned down the short sale and you have the reason why right in front of you. Why can't you just read off the computer screen what the reason I was turned down is." To which they say to her, "hold on, I have to ask a supervisor." HELLO! It is right there, in front of you. Read what is on the screen! Then she gets put on hold for 30 minutes and more- only to be told- "we have to get back to you on this."

So what is Freddie trying to avoid? What is the secrecy behind the rejection?

Please reblog so maybe someone who has some kind of authority over Freddie Mac will find this call for help and do something!

Hyper-Local Blogging is Loved by Google Juice

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:58:43 -0500

We are on our last session of SEO To The Top Webinar next week. Donna Harris has been taking the webinar and has been doing her 'homework'. It works if you work it. I am very proud of Donna's achievements and how she is able to grasp the concept of longtail keyword blogging.

Here is her the 'proof is in the pudding' post with her results.

The next session of SEO To The Top Webinar starts on January 13, 2010. Start your new year off with going to the top of google for the right keywords. Classes fill fast so register today by going to SEO TO THE TOP WEBINAR.

Via Donna Harris, REALTOR® & ASP - Hill Country Austin Lakeway Homes (RE/MAX Austin Skyline):

For the past few weeks, I've been learning a lot about SEO and how to get my blogs and websites ranked higher up in the search engines, without paying ungodly amounts of money to all those spamming companies. I've spoken to a few of my regular blog visitors and they've all noticed a change in the formats and how the blog posts are written.

Is that good or bad? It's good on my part, but I can see how it's a little more robotic on their part. However, I'm not blogging just for conversation with other members of ActiveRain. I'm blogging in order to help capture more of my audience and dig deeper into how they are searching different words.

Below are a few examples of how I went from being ranked almost no where for main words, to being consistently ranked on page one. Granted, I'm not in the first position on all terms, but I've made it to the first page, and for only working on this for a few weeks, that's a huge leap in this competitive Austin market.

With "Lake Pointe Bee Cave TX Homes for Sale" I'm ranked #1 and #2!! I'm ranked higher than their main HOA page!!

I was very surprised, but as I would receive leads through my PPC accounts, I found many people searched the term "Hill Country Austin TX" so I incorporated that into my blogs and appear many times on page one.

Falconhead West is the community I live in and there are a couple of other Realtors that live here too, so I'm making sure I'm found being ranked high and often for future business as I meet and get to know my new neighbors.

Lakeway TX is a very popular city in the area, and I have family that live there, so I'm also trying to make sure I capture the eyes of their neighbors.

What you'll notice is that Google isn't finding just my ActiveRain site, but it's also finding my outside blog along with the localism links as well. When you blog about hyper-local content, Google loves you! I'm appearing multiple times for each blog, but on different platforms, and you never know which platform the consumer will like. Even my blogs for the different restaurants and shops in the area are highly ranked on page one.

I am a TREC (Texas Real Estate Commission) approved instructor, and I teach MCE classes about creating an internet presence, and I've definitely learned some new things the past few weeks. Thank you to Katerina Gasset for your help and advice with some of the information beyond just the basics. I had never thought about how important long tail keywords were. I always concentrated on the short tail keywords as I felt that was more and most important... but it's not!

Some of the blogs I wrote for the above results are:

Geronimo Park - Apache Shores - Lakeway TX - Quaint Little Park

City of Lakeway TX - Lakeway City Park - Halloween Goblin Glow

Falconhead PGA Golf Course - Bee Cave TX

Real Estate - Lakeway TX Homes for Sale - Austin Texas - Market Activity

Falconhead - Bee Cave TX - Golf Course Community Great Place to Call Home!

Lake Pointe Austin - Bee Cave TX - Market Activity

Hill Country Austin TX Real Estate - Sales Have Increased

Hill Country Galleria Bee Cave Austin TX - Concert Series

Falconhead West Bee Cave TX - TailGate Party was a Success

Falconhead West Bee Cave Austin TX - Tour and Tailgate Party

Real Estate Hill Country Austin TX Homes Are Selling!

Lake Pointe, Austin TX Market Activity

**Are You Packed Yet?**

Donna Harris, REALTOR®
RE/MAX Austin Skyline
www.DonnaHomes.com
Donna@DonnaHomes.com

Austin TX Real Estate and the surrounding areas of Lakeway, Bee Cave, West Lake Hills, Cedar Park, Round Rock, Spicewood, Circle-C, Steiner Ranch, and everywhere in between... Hill Country Austin TX Real Estate and beyond. Whether you're buying or selling an Austin home, I'll be with you every step of the way.

For real time Austin TX listings, click here.

** #1 Agent in my Office for all of 2008 **

Copyright© 2009 By Donna Harris, All Rights Reserved. You may re-blog with links back to this post.
* Hyper-Local Blogging is Loved by Google Juice * was first published on donnahomesblog.com

How To Use Your Active Rain Blog To Get Listings!

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:16:50 -0500

How To Use Your Active Rain Blog To Get Listings!

There are many ways in which agents use their Active Rain blogs for buyers, like in relocation packages and email alerts. Since our focus is on getting listings and Bob Stewart has this contest going on about how we share our Active Rain blog to build existing relationships I thought that I would share how we incorporate our Active Rain blog on a listing presentation over the phone or in person.

We also use our Active Rain blog information with our existing sellers.

Here is the play by play:

1. We take all of our short sale information posts and post them on our website under its' own URL: short-sales-Florida.com. Whenever a person, attorney, prospect, neighbor, buyers agents, whomever has a question about short sales we send them a link to our page that contains all our Active Rain short sale posts all in one place so they don't have to figure out how to use, 'search' or 'tags'. This way they can read at their leisure, book mark the page of even print out the articles to read later on. This is probably our most successful and effective marketing strategy in using our Active Rain blog.

2. Go Google Me! You see, every agent has some sort of website, most are buried in the google sand box never having been indexed so that gives us a huge advantage. We have Active Rain screen shots that we use in our slide show presentation showing us as the point leader for Florida and a slide that shows the most subscribed to blogs on Active Rain. Since we are in the top 4- that is something we can use in our listing tool box! Now I know a lot of people will say so what about the points. Well, I am here to tell you that our sellers know it is a big deal because they read our blog. Not only that, people who don't know us will say to us: I don't know what those points mean but they must be important to be up there like that. Why would I want to market that we are one of the most popular blogs out of 160,000 agents plus? More exposure for their listings of course! Success breeds success.

3. On existing listings we take screen shots of our Active Rain statistics page along with our Clustermap screen shot to show them how many views their listing got from being posted on Active Rain. I love this feature because it is the proof in the pudding. Like Nestor says, "My favorite license plate is the Missouri, show me state." Show me what is going on with my listing! The sellers love this. We also use this same feature for listing prospects. We will take one of the existing listings and then show this same information to let them know what Nestor and Katerina can do for their property.

4. Problem short sales: We take a post we write such as Freddie Mac- Does Anyone There Know How To Read- and post it, then ask for reblogs, then take the post along with all the comments and send it to all our Senators and Congressmen, media outlets, etc, to get some action. You can makes these types of posts very viral if they contain a good cause. People like to help with causes. The seller was in tears as she read each of the comments because it meant so much to her that there was support for her.

5. Spreading the word: You know I write a lot of posts from my heart, political, natural health, homeschool, etc. We have our 'subscribe by email' set up through feedburner. You do not need to be an AR member to subscribe to our blog this way. Many of our local moms, families, consumers and agents who are not members of AR follow our blog. Like kind attracts like kind. So we have a lot of readers who follow our blog not because of real estate but because of what we believe and that in turn, turns into referrals from those who know, like and trust us. We have bookmarks and business cards that are just about our Active Rain blog. We pass those out everywhere we go.

6. Surprise: I am working on some fantastic marketing tools to highlight our Active Rain blog and more. Since I got my new mac I have discovered the endless marketing possibilities with the tools that mac has to offer. Already I have cut my time by one third in how long it takes to put a post together now. As I master these tools- I will share them with you but also wait til you see the stuff I am cooking up! Subscribe to our blog so you don't miss out.

If you are using Active Rain as your blogging platform you should look into ways in which to promote your blog to your existing data base, your existing clients and prospects in your community and on line. You can increase your readership, your email subscribers and develop the relationships that will lead you to listings and closed sales as well as making some great contacts along the way.

How To Use Your Active Rain Blog To Get Listings! by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Wellington Florida Short Sales- Luxury Listing Short Sales Do Close!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:45:25 -0500

Wellington Florida Short Sales- Luxury Listing Short Sales Do Close!

If you own a Wellington Florida Luxury home and have been wondering what your options other than foreclosure are; you may be able to do a short sale on your luxury property.

We just closed on a listing we had that was appraised for $2,400,000 just 3 years ago. This is one of our favorite listings because it sits right on the International Polo Fields and events. The views are outstanding during Polo season where you can host great parties overlooking the Polo games.

There were two loans on this property. The seller listed this property with many different agents that 'know' all the Polo players and those in that line of work and obviously his thinking was that these agents would be able to sell his home. He even listed this property with my best friend because of who she is married to but even that notoriety did not sell his home. Nestor kept in touch with him for 3 years. But the seller had promised it to this agent and that agent before he met with us. We were like 4th in the line of who he promised his listing to. Finally he listed his house with us through an expired mailing program where Nestor just stayed in front of his face on a regular basis. When it came time to really need someone to negotiate a short sale for him- he listed with us as the other agents who promote this type of listing are not into doing short sales.

We listed the house for $1,795,000 and reduced it to $1,495,000 when we started to get offers. The final reduction was down to $995,000. We had some crappy offers and then about 3 good offers. The seller chose the offer that he liked the best and that he felt most comfortable with.

Both short sale lenders were quick to respond and easy to work with. It took less than 60 days to get acceptance letters from the short sale lenders and we got an offer through at $740,000. This is one smart buyer! The land itself is worth $695,000! We have lots listed for near the same price in this exact neighborhood.

Another successful Short Sale closing!

FTC Disclaimer: Not all short sales close successfully. Not all luxury home markets have success in closing short sales. There are no guarantees that your short sale will be approved by your lender. This post is to be considered marketing for the purpose of obtaining listings. The information within is for informational purposes only.

Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Your Property Tax Bill

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:41:49 -0500

Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Your Property Tax Bill.

According to the Village Of Wellington town revenue has fallen for the third year in a row. When the money was being raked in when new housing permits were being applied for and the values were going up on existing housing and people were flipping their houses left and right- well, my thinking is that they should have been saving that money for a rainy day.

Unfortunately the village spent the money nearly as fast as it was pouring in. Also, the town counsel-people told us that if a town has too much money in their savings account than they are not qualified for certain federal programs. That makes no sense but then again I don't think there is any federal program that provides incentives for frugality.

The Village of Wellington is reducing its spending and services now in order to keep our taxes as low as they can for their 2010 budget.

The main focus this next year will be on residents' desire for safety and security:

Public Safety: There will be a contract increase to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office of 6% in 2010. We have a very safe village. We don't even have our own police department. The village contracts the Sheriff to provide for the public safety and the Sheriff has a small sub-station here in Wellington Florida.

Capital Projects That Create Jobs Program: The village got money from the stimulus package to rebuild Forest Hill Blvd. I personally don't agree with this because a building project in our town is only giving temporary work to a few people and is not going to significantly do anything to help the economy. But whatever, it is what it is...

Safe Neighborhoods: Safe neighborhoods is the top priority for all the residents here in the Village of Wellington Florida. So there will be an investment in code enforcement and nuisance abatement. They will also be setting up citizen patrols in certain areas in Wellington.

It looks like the Village of Wellington is going to reduce spending by 20 million dollars. They are going to do this through:

Changing hours at all of the Village offices,
Mandatory unpaid furloughs for employees,
Elimination of raises,
Reducing benefits,
Eliminating non-essential capital expenditures,
Eliminating positions by consolidating services.

There is also a rise in cost for our solid waste collection which is included in our tax bills to $165 per property. This includes your bulk curbside pickup. I don't complain about this one at all. That is not alot to pay to get curbside garbage pickup twice a week including recycling, landscaping pick up and bulk pickup. I don't know many states where you can leave an old refrigerator at the curb and it will be gone in the morning! I am happy to pay this fee.

The ad valor em tax rate is now set at 2.8 mills. That is up from 2.34 mills of last year for the same amount of revenue.

If you have questions concerning your Village of Wellington tax bill contact the village at ci.wellington.fl.us.

FTC Disclosure: This post if for informational purposes only and based on information gained from the Village of Wellington, it is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should not be relied on in making a housing purchase decision. We may gain listings or buyers because of writing this post. We are not employees of the Village of Wellington.

Weston Florida Homes For Sale

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:18:39 -0500

Weston Florida Homes For Sale- Weston is in Broward county Florida and is a great planned unit developments, also knows as a PUD. This means that the entire city of Weston Florida was built based on plans of a very organized nature. All the infrastructure was already planned before the developers even started to build homes.

There are good real estate values in the city of Weston these days. Weston Florida homes for sale have experienced a drop in prices just like the rest of Broward county however, Weston Florida is a very popular place to live so the properties when priced right will not stay on the market long and will most likely be generating multiple offers.

Photo: Courtesy of City of Weston

There are about 61,000 people living in Weston Florida. Weston Florida is in the western part of South Florida, west of Fort Lauderdale. It is 31 miles away from downtown Miami and 25 miles from the beach in Fort Lauderdale. It borders up to the Everglades.

Right in this post here we have placed for your convenience an interactive search tool so that you don't even have to leave this page in order to begin your search for a Weston Florida home for sale. In fact, you can change around the prices you want to search for, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and this tool will even give you a map with the Weston Florida homes for sale on it. Feel free to search with this tool. You don't even have to register in order to use it. You don't have to leave your name or contact information until you feel you want to reach out for further assistance in your Weston Florida homes for sale home search.

Wellington Florida Homes For Sale

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:46:45 -0500

Wellington Florida Homes For Sale- Are you being relocated to the Palm Beach County area or perhaps you come down here to Wellington Florida for the Winter Equestrian Festival and other equestrian events year after year. Maybe you have always wanted to buy a second home here in Wellington Florida but the prices were out of reach or you were just not sure about maintaining more properties. Well, now the prices are the lowest they have been in years.

There are some amazing Wellington Florida Homes For Sale with great values close to the Showgrounds and hacking distance to all the equine events that are so popular here in Wellington Florida.

We just put one of our listings under contract that is right behind the showgrounds; within hacking distance and right where all the fabulous sunny South Florida equestrian action is. This townhome is currently listed at $429,000 and we had 3 offers on it within one week.

We also have 4 equine friendly excellent one plus acre lots for sale next to the International Polo fields and Polo events. These lots can be combined in order to have room to build your Wellington area equestrian ranch with stables, paddocks and barn.

Since the season is about to begin and we are seeing all the out of state license plates in the Publix shopping plaza becoming more frequent this would be a great time to take advantage of the before season real estate pricing.

Right in this post here we have placed for your convenience an interactive search tool so that you don't even have to leave this page in order to begin your search for a Wellington Florida home for sale. In fact, you can change around the prices you want to search for, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and this tool will even give you a map with the Wellington Florida homes for sale on it. Feel free to search with this tool. You don't even have to register in order to use it. You don't have to leave your name or contact information until you feel you want to reach out for further assistance in your Wellington Florida homes for sale home search.

Online Toolbox: Don't Have Time To Read It All On-Line? Use Read-it-Later!

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:29:56 -0500

I love to browse the web and I do a ton of research on the web for business, spying on my competition, learning more about all the subjects I coach in, finding great homeschool sites, curriculums, lapbooks, teaching ideas, unit studies and of course keeping up with politics and my church stuff. The internet is a fascinating library that you can get lost in very quickly.

Have you ever started your day with a link to one interesting article but then in that article there is a link to another article and so it goes on and on and soon you look up at the clock and wonder where your day has gone?

It takes a lot of discipline for those of us who love to read and learn to know when to shut it off! If I had my way, I would just be in learning mode all the time since that is what I love to do. But I still have bills to pay, kids to teach and people to help and that is my focus and my passion.

So what I used to do is just keep opening new tabs in Firefox. Pretty soon I would have 12 to 20 tabs open at the same time right below my tool bar. I would get ideas for posts and then say to myself that I would bookmark them before I turn off my computer. But then I forget to go and look at my bookmarks. I also forget how I filed a certain bookmark.

Well, I found the solution! What a great online tool to add to your online tool box!

It is called Read-It-Later! It is simple, easy to use and I know how to use it. It is a Firefox add on. It also works on Chrome and Safari. There is also an Iphone app for it.

Just go to Firefox add-ons and type in Read-it-later and download it. Or you can direct to the Read It Later website to download it here.

You will have to restart Firefox once you download Read-It-Later. ( ooh, I love this Mac! Screen shots in one click, add arrows in one click!)

Then look up in your toolbar in your address bar and you will see a little blank check mark. When you get to a page that you want to read later, then just click the check mark. It will then save that page in a read it later area off to the right of your address bar. It looks like a little brown book with a gold book mark.

When you want to read your read it later articles just click on the brown book which will bring a drop down menu of all the articles you want to read later. After you read one, you just click the little check mark again and it will mark it read.

They also have an offline version of read it later so if you want to read your articles in an area where you don't have an internet connection you can. While you are online just click the brown book and then click on read offline.

You will be led through a couple of steps and then you are good to go. When you are offline just go into your Firefox browser and click on offline. You will then be able to read your articles that are stored in read it later offline.

This is a huge time saver for me and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and the other 2 million users that are enjoying Read it later.

In case you missed my series on What's In Your Active Rain Tool Box and more, here are the links:

What's In Your Marketing Tool Box? Part 1- The Overview

What Is In Your Active Rain Tool Box -Part 2- Active Rain Tools

What's In Your Active Rain Tool Box? Part 3- How Much Does It All Cost?

FTC Disclosure: I am not an employee of Read it later, I am not an affiliate of Read it later. I do not make any money explaining how I use Read it later. I may get a thank you from the company. I may get more subscribers to my blog because of sharing great information I find on the internet. Read it later is a free add on however since I don't know any of their marketing plan I do not know nor can not know if they ever plan to monetize their tool. I am only sharing my experience with this tool.

Online Toolbox: Don't Have Time To Read It All On-Line? Use Read-It-Later! by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Wellington Florida Happenings- Trunk or Treat! Come Out and Have Some Safe Fun!

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:09:01 -0500

Wellington Florida Happenings - Trunk or Treat! Come out and Have Some Safe Fun!

Come out, bring the kids and join us for some good and safe fun at our Annual Trunk or Treat hosted by my church, The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Don't want to fight the crowds? Don't want to take the kids from street to street? Want to keep the kids safe and still have fun? Join us!

Friday October 30th at 6:30 p.m. at the corner of Big Blue Trace and Wellington Trace in the parking lot of the church. This is a free event.

At 6:30 p.m. there will be a costume parade in our multi-purpose room. Then right at 7:00 p.m all the kids will go out into the parking lot to do their trunk or treating. The cars will all be decorated and loaded up with candy for the kids. The kids get to go around the parking lot a few times until the candy runs out.

This is so much fun but make sure that you are on time or you may miss out!

Here are some photos of our Trunk or Treat from last year.

Wellington Florida Happenings- Trunk or Treat! Come Out and Have Some Safe Fun!

Net Neutrality- Is It More Interference With Your Online Business?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:53:50 -0500

Net Neutrality is going to be voted on tomorrow at the FCC. The vote is going to be to begin drafting the network rules.

The internet is the last free speech and free enterprise place. The internet is the place where you can take $100 and become very wealthy if you find the need and then fill that need with a product or service. Many people who have lost their jobs have gone to the internet and worked for hours and hours to build a business. For anyone that does not think that regulating the internet is not going to affect them, it may not, but it more certainly will affect someone in your family or someone you know.

The proponants of net neutrality say that everyone in America would have access to broadband/internet.

In the 1930's when radio was the mode of communication- did everyone get a free radio?

In the 1950's when Television became the method for getting information- did everyone get a free television?

The sense of entitlement has really gone too far. The people this will hurt the most is the small business people because all of the band-with will be used to create a sluggish system. You think the days of slow, like in 56K modem is behind us? Think again.

The next part of the program that is extremely dangerous is that the government is already setting aside 7.2 Billion dollars to make sure net neutrality gets put in place. First of all, it is going to cost a lot more than that so where are they going to get the money? Secondly, it is going to lead to more government regulation and interference with a free market that is working just fine the way it is right now. If you don't have internet access and can not afford it, you can go to the library and get free internet at the library. The government wants access to broadband everywhere however that would not drive the price down, it would in fact, drive the price of broadband up.

Think about slow. We were in the Apple store the other day working on a one on one class and needed to download Crossover. The Apple store has DSL. There were a lot of customers in the store playing around with all the computers which resulted of course with them going on line to check things out. The time for Crossover to load at our home was about 4 minutes total. At the Apple store it took 18 minutes to download because of all the people using the same line. Think about it! Do you think the government really cares about how slow or fast your connection is? You would be forced into adding expensive T-lines into your offices just to get a faster load time.

There are many proponants for net neutrality especially special interest groups and companies like Google, Facebook, Skype. Yet Google wants it both ways. You see, they backed net neutrality but then don't want it applied to Google Voice. You see, it goes again to if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander, NOT! Google Voice is free except for in some areas where it is just too expensive for them to offer it, like in very rural areas.There they use blocked numbers. Well, net neutrality rules, in other words, the government, would force Google to either offer Google Voice for free for all users or they would have to charge all users to use Google Voice. It would no longer be free and that hurts you and me. Mostly, it is not the job of the government to dictate the terms of service of Google.

There are many internet providers around, there is plenty of competition. The more the demand grows, the more competition will ensue. This will drive the prices lower through free markets. If you don't like your internet provider, it is starting to be a norm that you can switch to another provider. The competition will keep things fair. The free market has a way of working things out.

What I don't like about net neutrality is the over extension of the arm of government intruding into the free markets and they will, mark my words, start regulating the last frontier of free speech, free enterprise and low cost ways of making a living on the internet. He who pays gets to make the rules. The government starts paying, they will start more regulating.

The most interesting thing that I found or should I say, did not find- is any discussion relating this from either the proponants or the opponants. Because it seems, at the end of the day, the folks just don't really matter.

Feel free to distribute and reblog.

Making Your Posts Colorful and Sexy- Updates To Your Online Blog Editors.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:55:02 -0500

I am getting a lot of emails from members who are having either a hard time finding the posts that I have written about how to add color, change text and highlight your posts. So here are the links but also the updates to answer your issues and questions:

1. Nvu is no longer a link that is working. Nvu is now Kompozer. So if you don't already have Nvu on your computer you will no longer be able to get that program. Go to Kompozer instead.

2. Kompozer issues:

There is a Kompozer for the Mac.
Use the Kompozer for Mac if you have a Mac.
If you are on a Windows PC; use Firefox as your browser.
There is a little bug in the Kompozer file. If you have a problem opening the install files you can just click on the Kompozer icon in the data box. That will start Kompozer.

3. Important steps for Kompozer:

Always save your work. When you are writing your post save your file every now and again.
Make sure you save your file before you copy and paste it to Active Rain.
Do not add your photos into Kompozer. Add your photos in Active Rain's editor.
Make sure you click on source at the bottom of the Kompozer page as shown below.
Once the html is showing then copy and paste that code into your Active Rain editor.
Make sure you delete the first line of the html code that contains 'public...'.

Attention: There is a bug in the Active Rain editor with Firefox's copy and paste function. If you are clicking over to Active Rain and get that pop up box with your whole post all pushed together you are using the wrong mode of copy and paste. Make sure you go to the top of your Firefox browser tool bar and do the old fashioned way of using copy and paste. Click on Edit, click on select all, click on copy. Then go to Active Rain and click on the html editor, then go back up to the Firefox edit button and click paste. That will override that pop up box which erases all of your colors and sizes.

4. Scribefire Addon for Firefox: I get a ton of emails regarding this add-on. Active Rain's editor is not a blogger platform or any of the other supported platforms so you can not choose your blog in Scribefire. This is a great tool for quick posts that you really don't care about backing up and also for commenting. I don't use it for adding photos or anything like that. It is fast and easy and you can just copy and paste the text you write into the Active Rain WYSIWYG editor.

If you are using a Mac- you can just drag and drop your Scribefire text into the comments and on your WYSIWYG editor. Super easy, super fast! Get a Mac!

Here is the link to the post I wrote about 3 different blogging editor tools. Remember Nvu is no longer available.

Making Your Posts Colorful and Sexy- Updates To Your Online Blog Editors by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Before Active Rain and Now... How Active Rain Saved My Real Estate Career and More...

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:37:49 -0500

The journey from a newbie on Active Rain to becoming an Ambassador has been one of the most engaging and rewarding happenings of my entire life. By no means has my life been dull so don't get the wrong idea here. My life of over a half of a century has seen many things that most people will never see. I have been down roads many want to go and many would never want to embark upon as well as roads wherein I wish I had no part of.

Joining back in 2007 has made me one of the long time survivors on this great island where we enjoy the downpours of rain, where we embrace the rain that fills us up with the best research in the field of real estate in the world and where challenges are met with a tribe that surrounds themselves with friendship and outpouring of support. The immunity idol that we win on Active Rain shields us from being voted out of the real estate business if we choose to embrace all of its' great rewards.

I was going to write a post about how Active Rain saved my career yet this contest may just be the right place to share my journey of how it was before Active Rain. Being a veteran Realtor® for many years and going through so many ups and downs in my personal life that did have bearing on the fruits of my labors as the years in this business come and go. Being a top producer has always been easy for me because I love business competition and love to think of new ways in which to promote or expand upon business. Born an entrepreneur - always an entrepreneur. Yet there is also a danger in being at the top of your game and that is called 'burn out'. They have a saying that it is lonely at the top however, for me, it was always an embracing adventure because of my nature to teach, inspire and help others to join me at the top.

Active Rain not only saved my business but it also received my soul, healing me, raising me up. There is a saying that says if you are suffering then find someone who is worse off than you are and help them. Through this activity I have discovered being anxiously engaged in a good cause will free you from victimhood, from ills and depression. Soon your troubles will be but as a miniature nag rather than a rope around your neck.

One day after one of my BNI meetings I enjoyed lunch with a real estate agent friend of mine. 90% of my friends are Realtors® here in our town as well as online. We were discussing how perhaps it was time to reinvent myself and find a new business to get involved in. My friend looked at me and said, "You have a gift, a gift to inspire people, you would make a great coach especially since that is what you do all the time for free anyhow." Pondering upon that thought I began to do what I coach my friends to do. I asked myself, "When you were but a small little girl, what were your dreams? What did you want to be when you grow up? What did you do in your free time?" This is an exercise in discovering wherein lies your passion. Whatever you do in life, you need to be passionate about it and the reasons you do what you do must either make you cry or make you laugh for your WHY gets you through the obstacles that certainly will find their way to you. The vehicles may change along the way but the outcome, the goal, should be as a lighthouse that shines a light to guide you through rough waters and stormy seas.

As soon as I came home from school it would be torture for my younger siblings who were forced to endure learning whatever I had learned that day in school. Consequently I taught both of my brothers how to read before they were 2 and 6 when I was 8. Then it would be off to organizing all of our family books. My mother was a student at Stanford University where she could buy the old books for pennies filling up our home library and I ran that home library! My mother would not get a television so we read and read and read. Soon my mother discovered that I had a gift for writing poetry and short stories. As I grew older this transformed into being able to explain to others what I had read and that created a passion to speak in front of audiences. There is too much to tell in one post about how I came to be who I am, that would fill a book. Suffice it to say; writing, inspiring, teaching and helping others are my gifts.

Speaking with my friend at lunch that day the burn out was not so much about not wanting to do real estate but more about my passion being submersed beneath the run of the mill errands of the business. My journey to how I was led to Active Rain is another long story that would not be conducive to this post in particular so allow me to let you know that I found Sally Cheeseman before I joined Active Rain and through reading her blog it came to me that she as a real estate agent had found a way to pay it forward through her passion in writing through this place called Active Rain.

My passion turned into a flame, alive once again as it was when I was a child. Paying it forward with no expectation of reward enriched my life beyonds what words could ever deliver. My passion for writing burns as a flame in my heart and soul because I speak and write from the depths of my soul. Transparency is the connecting spark to meet where others are and to embrace one another's friendships. My coaching business has thrived, after all, where else can I be blessed with such a captive audience! Something I struggled to figure out how to accomplish, how to get the word out and how to run the coaching business. I was coaching some of my friends who are in other small businesses and one day Nestor said to me, "I think you found your calling. You have a gift for teaching, coaching and writing; but you also have a vast knowledge of the real estate business and practise. Put those together and you have arrived."

So before Active Rain was much different in many dimensions than after and now in Active Rain. Active Rain actually saved my real estate career; relighted my love for the parts of the business that I loved yet had lost sight of. In fact, Active Rain saved more than that for me. We were just about to go into partnership with one of our clients in the Impact Glass business when I discovered Active Rain and thought long and hard about what path I wanted to travel down. It is my dream and always has been to write my books, ( I have about 13 of them started and unfinished) and to be a sought after speaker. It is my dream to run our real estate company 90% online and to coach agents to become the best that they can be, breaking through their self imposed income ceilings, striking through their limited beliefs and embracing life and their dreams to the fullest. I want to be retired from active real estate transactions when I am 62, that is 11 years from now and with Active Rain in my life and being a huge part of our business model I can see that dream manifesting into reality.

This does not even scratch the surface to what Active Rain has done for our real estate company and business. Now more than 60% of our real estate listings come from our Active Rain blogging. That in an of itself is enough to get you off the fence to join Active Rain and get your reward challenges.

Come on in, pay it forward, discover your dreams and find your passion and grab your immunity idol that will shield you from being voted off the real estate island.

Before Active Rain and Now... How Active Rain Saved My Real Estate Career and More... by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Freddie Mac- Is There Anyone There That Knows How To Read?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:29:03 -0500

Freddie Mac- Is there anyone there that knows how to read? Our last hope is that someone there in your office has the decency to respond to our many requests and the homeowner's many requests for help.

Freddie Mac- You rejected a short sale work out program for this homeowner and we had 2 buyers ready to pay the appraised price for this property. Your appraisal came in below what the buyers are willing to pay for this house.

Freddie Mac- The homeowner even hired an attorney to make sure there was nothing amiss in the short sale documents. You sent this file to your legal department and then never disclosed the reason it was sent to your legal department. So much for the transparency that was promised.

Freddie Mac- Chase is the servicer for this note that you own. Our negotiator at Chase is the trainer for Freddie Mac loss mitigation.We know she knows what she is doing. She is highly respected and competant. She saw no issues with this work out package. In fact, she was fully expecting an approval from Freddie Mac.

Freddie Mac- You send Chase a denial letter for the short sale along with stating that you will not approve any work out program for this homeowner. So you want to own another home in Port St Lucie and then sell it in a declining market as a foreclosure instead of providing a home for a new buyer who is qualified and ready to buy this property?

Freddie Mac- Chase stopped the sale of this house back in July in order to process the short sale. The negotiator was so sure this would go through as we did also and the homeowner's attorney also thought this was a slam dunk short sale approval that they stopped the sale at the courthouse. As soon as you reject the short sale you put the property back up on the auction block with a date of October 27.

Freddie Mac- The homeowner has asked you over and over again for a reason for this rejection in case there is something that could easily be worked out. You stated back on August 16th that you would generate the letter. As of today neither us nor the homeowner have received any thing from you with a reason for the rejection. This is the first time since 1995 of doing short sales that we have run into such a stumbling block and one that is created by Freddie Mac.

The homeowner and we who are her agents have written letters, faxes and emails to all the chain of command at Freddie Mac and the Senators and Congressmen in Washington DC to beg for someone to care enough to respond. Time is of the essence. There has to be a reason and this rejection needs to be overturned because there is no possible legitimate reason why this short sale was rejected when it met every criteria that Freddie mac requires. (Unless you are discriminating against female senior citizens- we have not ever seen anything like this in our entire careers.)

The following people have NOT responded!

Mr Bruce Witherell, Chief Operation Officer at Freddie Mac,
Mr Donald J Bisenius, Executive Vice President Freddie Mac,
Mr Charles E Halderman CEO of Freddie Mac,
Senator Bill Nelson,
Congresswoman Caroline McCarthy,
Congressman Tom Rooney.

Senator Charles Schumer is the only one who responded. He sent a letter he wrote in behalf of the homeowner, our letter and our homeowner's letter directly to Mr Bernard Fulton who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. We have not heard from Bernard Fulton as of this date. We are very thankful to Senator Charles Schumer for his help in trying to get this situation in the right hands.

Freddie Mac- You can contact Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset at 561-753-0135 to get us the answers and remedies we are seeking.

FTC Disclosure: This post may incite, motivate or encourage a homeowner somewhere to contact us to list their property as a short sale because they see that we will fight to the bitter end to make sure our sellers get a fair shake and positive outcome to their short sale.

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Welcome Our New Weston Florida Area Buyers' Agent!

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:21:02 -0500

Please join me in welcoming our new Weston Florida area Buyers' agent- Julie Locke!

Julie Locke has joined Nestor and Katerina's Real Estate Team with International Properties and Investments Inc as their buyers' agent for the Weston Florida real estate market area and the Davie Florida real estate market area.

We met Julie through a short sale transaction. She brought us a buyer for one of our short sale listings that we had in Weston Florida. We successfully closed that transaction.

Just for a point of interest- the house that Julie's buyers bought was the listing referral that we got from Broker Bryant and Lenn Harley! What a small world. Well, Julie was so impressed with the way in which she was treated and communicated with during this long short sale process that she has chosen to work with us to further her real estate goals.

We are very excited as this is a newer market for us as far as blogging goes and keyword research goes! Broward county Florida has some great home prices right now and the market is moving. In fact, on the listing that Julie sold- we had multiple offers- however, the seller only chooses one to send to the short sale lender.

Julie Locke just set up her Active Rain profile page. You don't think anyone can come to work on our team without an Active Rain account, do you? LOL!

T o view Florida Short Sales- Click here . We know Weston and Davie Florida Short Sales and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your home in Broward County Florida : Call us today.

By TwitterButton

Duplicate Content- Fact Vs Fiction!

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:25:45 -0500

Duplicate Content- Fact versus Fiction!

You have your Active Rain blog climbing the SERPS, then you start your Active Blog, outside Active Rain blog and then maybe you then send your posts to Facebook or you have a wordpress blog. Some of you then will take your posts that you have written and copy and paste them into your website. You are doing great, then suddenly- you read some blog or some comment in the blogosphere that you are posting Duplicate content and you may get the Google slap, ending up in the dreaded Google sand box.

Some bloggers get so fearful that they may stop blogging on Active Rain. You will also hear people who don't like Active Rain using the duplicate content spin to attack Active Rain bloggers. Well, pay them no mind. Look the other way. Walk on by.

Duplicate content that gets the Google discipline is highly likely not going to be yours. Below you can find all of this information from Matt Cutts of Google- in his own words. So don't take my word for it. You can have it right from the horse's mouth. Matt Cutts talked about duplicate content at the latest SMX Seattle conference.

The kind of duplicate content that Google is concerned with is the spammers that go out and use software to duplicate thousands of sites and then try to manipulate the search engine spiders to pick up their sites in SERPS ( Search Engine Results Pages). This is what happened to Squidoo several years ago. I was very active on Squidoo and my lenses were climbing fast on SERPS when we all were at the mercy of some hackers that got into Squidoo and started spamming the search engines. Now Seth Godin is a pretty famous guy on the internet, the creator of Squidoo, yet even he could not stop the Google slap. There was one guy in South America that produced 1500 Squidoo lenses with some software that were all spam! Matt explains more of what Google looks at for spam in the video I posted below.

When you are writing on your Active Rain blog and then click on the post to your outside blog and then add the same post to your website or your wordpress blog- there is nothing wrong with that. You can even tell the search engines which blog is your 'authority' site. But that is beyond the scope of this post. Let's just say that you do post regularly as stated in the beginning of this paragraph. What Google algorithms will do is to choose one to two spots on the search result page for your content. They will just ignore the others.

So if you are following me; it does not hurt you to post duplicate content, you don't get punished for doing so and you get more chances of Google picking up one blog or another. It is like you have put out the same bait in different locations to attract the spiders to your bait. When the spiders arrive they may choose one bait over the other. Many people get the notion that they are being punished because Google only chooses one or two articles with the same content but that is not a punishment. It is just a matter of bringing back to the searcher the best possible variety of matches.

Matt also states that seldom is Google picking up article submissions to article marketers like Ezine articles because they know that is an article from your blog or website. It is still great to do article marketing for the link value.

The goal of Google is to get smarter and smarter. For instance if you change like 10% of the content in one post or just change your keywords around in another post of the same- Google is now smart enough to catch that little trick that many marketers used. Now they will look at that as duplicate content and count it still as one article.

Happy Blogging!

The next SEO TO THE TOP Webinar begins on January 13, 2010- get your space reserved today, limited spaces for the webinar. Start your new year off right with a great SEO boost to the top.

Duplicate Content - Fact Vs Fiction! by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

By TwitterButton

Wellington Florida Happenings

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:46:54 -0500

Wellington Florida Happenings:

The Jewish Teens from the Jewish Middle school are learning about Noah in the Torah. They will be visiting Lion Country Safari this Sunday October 18 at 1:30 p.m. If your teen would like to attend please register at JTIPalmBeach.org. This event is sponsored by the Jewish Teen Initiative.

This Sunday October 18th- our 7 yr old son is going to be a part of our special Children's Sacrament program at the Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints located at 990 Big Blue Trace in Wellington Florida. He won the 'most spirited singer award' during practise time! The program begins at 10 a.m. They will be presenting, "The Eternal Family". The public is welcome to attend.

Sole to Sole is a charitable project collecting shoes for the shoeless all around the world. There are millions of children and adults around the world who do not have adequate foot wear. If you live in Wellington Florida and have shoes that are new or gently worn that you no longer use or need; please drop them off at the Village of Wellington office.

Wellington Village counsel voted to reduce spending by reducing the work week to 4 days. Starting this Friday- the Village of Wellington Offices will be closed on Fridays. This is estimated to save about $300,000. So remember not to go and pay your water bill on Fridays!

By TwitterButton

Wellington Florida Happenings! -was first published on South- Florida-Luxury-Living.com.

Active Rain and Twitter- Spark Good Deeds- Referrals and Friendships!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:00:33 -0500

How do you work Active Rain and Twitter together? I spend most of my time networking on Active Rain and right next to that is Twitter. I absolutely love Twitter, not as much as I love Active Rain but it comes in second in effective social networking strategies.

In a post a little later on this week I will give you some tools to use with Twitter to make your Twitter networking more effective and take less time.

Today I want to share with you a great story to illustrate how you can make it rain on Twitter too.

I noticed a post by Dave Keys a while back. I was drawn to his blog because he is a Photographer/website designer and knows about SEO which I love to teach and I am always learning more about. I wrote a comment on his post on Active Rain. He must have come to my blog at some point because he started following me on Twitter and then I followed him back.

While I was on his blog, I read his profile and visited one of the websites he had built for a client of his highlighting a great rental in Hawaii with absolutely wonderful photography. His work was quite impressive. The photography on his website shows his talent well.

One day on Twitter one of my followers wrote a tweet about how he needed to get a website built. By the description of what this person was looking for it seemed to match to Dave's style. Immediately Dave Keys came to mind so I introduced the two of them to each other.

This is an example of how you can pay it forward on Twitter. Paying it forward is a huge way to get ahead on Twitter and to get noticed because when you go out of your way to help others- others take notice and will want to then help you. It is the same formula for newbies to use on Active Rain.

Dave and I retweet each others' tweets and make a comment here and there @ each other.

One day I was working on getting my grandfather's video that he had made before he died that he wanted to share with all of us and his many friends at his memorial service. It was in a format that my pc nor my mac would take- it would not load to youtube which is where I wanted to host it so that all my relatives could view it.

The normal thing for me to do now when I am stuck is to send out a tweet about it.

So I did. Well, Dave Keys read that tweet and being the great producer/photographer that he is- he offered through a tweet to help me. He said he could take my movie and reformat it so that I could upload it to youtube.

I sent the movie file to box.net and shared the file with Dave Keys. Dave then downloaded that file and reformatted the video then uploaded it to his website, gave me the file name to go and grab. Then I was able to finish the post I wrote in memory of my grandfather who just passed away this past July at the age of 95 from lung cancer.

If you are using Twitter as a vehicle to just announce your blog posts I strongly suggest that you turn off your Twitter updater on Active Rain and anywhere else you blog and send out an auto Tweet- announcing your blog posts. You will not get followers that way and the ones you do get will end up being spammy folks who want to sell their wares before they developed a relationship with you. I will show you some ways in which to quickly pay it forward that Twitter folks will adore you for.

More on Twitter a bit later. Check out Dave Keys on Active Rain!

Active Rain and Twitter- Spark Good Deeds- Referrals and Friendships! by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

By TwitterButton

West Palm Beach Acreage- Update On Cancer Testing in the Acreage.

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:30:59 -0500

West Palm Beach Acreage- Update on Cancer Testing in the Acreage.

Residents of the acreage area of West Palm Beach, west of West Palm Beach, North of Royal Palm Beach and Wellington Florida and East of Loxahatchee Florida- were and some still are concerned about contamination that may have been the cause of an increase of residents getting cancer in a specific area of the Acreage. This semi-rural area has about 45,000 residents.

The Acreage consists of homes that are all on at least one (1) acre of land with most being on plotted land of 1.25 acre per home. This is a very popular place for many people to live especially people who do not want to be bossed around by homeowners associations. There is no homeowners association and the county is the only entity that enforces code enforcement. Those who love animals also are attracted to the Acreage area because you can have your horses, dogs, chickens, roosters and goats on your property unlike most towns and subdivisions in Palm Beach County where you would have limits to how many dogs you can even have.

Erin Brockovich even came here to meet with area residents who are concerned about a link between the land and the cancer rates. The state of Florida did a lot of testing and the state regulator's finding that the well water has met with the Florida health standards. The law firm that Erin Brockovich works with is doing a further investigation to see if there is a link between contamination and brain cancer in that area.

A few parents who have children who have died from the brain cancer think that they are not testing for the right contaminants in the right places. The DEP tested for over 200 substances.

If you live in the Acreage area of West Palm Beach and you are concerned about this issue you may contact the Florida State Department of Health.

Homes are still selling in the Acreage of West Palm Beach Florida. Search for your Acreage home right here on this interactive home search widget below.

By TwitterButton

West Palm Beach Acreage-Update on Cancer Testing in Acreage -was first published on South- Florida-Luxury-Living.com.

Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Chinese Dry Wall Claims May Get Your Insurance Canceled

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:00:43 -0500

Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Chinese Dry Wall Claims May Get Your Insurance Canceled.

It has come to our attention that some homeowners' insurance companies are canceling policies after homeowners make a claim because Chinese Dry Wall was found in their home.

Most developers and builders we know have been taking care of the Chinese Dry Wall issues themselves. Where Chinese Dry Wall has been found, the builders or developers if it is still a new development have been moving families into other homes while they go in and tear out all the Chinese Dry Wall and replace it with code approved and certified dry wall. There are many lawsuits going through the courts right now against builders and developers who are not replacing the dry wall and repairing the damage. Lennar and GL homes are 2 of the builders that are repairing, replacing and re-mediating the issues with Chinese Dry Wall without a cost to the homeowner. In turn, the builders and developers are turning to the manufacturers for recouping some of the expenses.

We are not attorneys so you would need to talk to your attorney first and this post is not giving you legal advice. What we have found many homeowners doing is first getting the builder to replace and repair the Chinese Dry Wall and also getting the builder to pay for their temporary move and storage of their belongings. This way a claim would not have to be made to their insurance company.

Most claims to insurance companies are being denied anyways, because most insurance policies do not cover building material defects and contamination.

The other problem with making a claim to your insurance company is that is now put on your record and your insurance company may not renew your policy unless you totally fix the Chinese Dry Wall issue. So if you don't have the money to fix it and the builder refuses to fix it or you bought the home from a homeowner after their warranty ran out and now can not fix it- you may have a real problem on your hands by your insurance company knowing about it.

Some of the adverse affects of Chinese Dry Wall are health issues such as difficulty in breathing, nosebleeds and headaches. The property issues consist of air conditioning units that stop working and the smell of rotten eggs throughout the house.

The costs to replace the Chinese Dry Wall and the corroding parts of metals and air conditioners and other construction parts- can ring up to 1/3 of the original construction cost.

Thousands of homes here in Florida that were built after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 contain Chinese Dry Wall. This also happened to be the housing boom time here in Florida and builders were buying dry wall from China that was not approved nor stamped certified to use.

The Florida Senate is holding meetings in Tallahassee to discuss ways in which to help the homeowners. Making the insurance companies cover the claims is not on the table being discussed at this time. Most of the attorneys representing homeowners in lawsuits against their insurance companies argue that no one even knew what Chinese Dry Wall was when homeowners policies were established and to deny their claims because it was not invented is just wrong.

We will stay tuned and follow this story to see how it all turns out and bring you the breaking Wellington Florida Real Estate News.

FTC Disclosure: While there is no outright solicitation in this post nor in the intent of this post and it is written for informational purposes we may end up getting a listing or a buyer that contacts us because they are a reader of our blog or they happen upon this post as they search on the internet for information. There is a chance that we may gain some type of benefit known or unknown from writing this post. Hmmm, wondering if this covers enough of the vagueness of the new FTC rule on disclosure of business relationships that may be, could be or may one day be formed through writing this post.

By TwitterButton

Wellington Florida Real Estate News- Chinese Dry Wall Claims May Get Your Insurance Canceled. -was first published on South- Florida-Luxury-Living.com.