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New Years Resolutions

champagne Do you make New Years Resolutions?

Do you keep New Years Resolutions?

" Experts in the New Year's Resolution field estimate that 25 percent of resolutions don't make it past Jan. 8." New Years Resolutions, they're easy to make, hard to keep according to CBS 'Modern Times' blog. Lloyd Garver's list of New Years Resolutions for Others: " New Year's Resolutions For Other People, In The Spirit Of The Season, Lloyd Garver Feels It's Better To Give Than Receive." He has resolutions for politicians, celebrities, broadcasters, the fashion industry, Show Biz, sports stars including:

Broadcasting: Every morning news show should resolve to have at least two minutes of news out of every two hours.

Show Biz:
All female celebrities should resolve to eat at least three healthy meals - during the year.

All male celebrities should resolve not to take romantic roles opposite women young enough to be their granddaughters.

Do you have a New Years resolution for the real estate industry?

For Zillow?

For HomeGain?

For Realtor.com?

For real estate bloggers?

For buyers?

For sellers?

I have a New Year's Resolution Poll on my other blog.....

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ActiveRain members: Comment at your own risk. Please note if this content is for the general public and not for the real estate industry, I will delete most comments from ActiveRain members. Previously I was turning off comments on local content but I have decided to put out the unwelcome mat for ActiveRain members, instead. Nothing personal. Move along and comment where it will be appreciated! Thanks.

Posted by Maureen McCabe Central OH Homes on 12/27/2006 11:09 AM

Comments (35)

activerain, new years resolutions, new year

35 Comments on New Years Resolutions

DEC

2006

Hi Maureen, since I don't really have any bad habits to give up I guess my only resolution would be to sharpen my blogging skills this year and to keep working out so I can continue to indulge in my love for chocolate! ;-)

A New Years Resolution for Zillow.com to wake up Ben Wiseley and tell him it was just a dream but he has slept through Christmas since the phone never rang.

Maureen - I just went and voted on your other blog. I tend not to make resolutions because I don't really keep them. I do keep things in mind that I want to work on, get better at, try, etc. - those may be resolutions and I just call them something different. ;-)

Happy New Year!! Happy New Year w/ computer

Ann

I don't make them because I am don't keep them either. What can I say? I do what I want most of the time.

And you, MM?

My resolution is that all of us have outstanding business in 2007 - and the only movie star who should be allowed to have young female co stars is Al Pacino :-)

I thought a lot of new RE bloggers came out of the wood work on New Years day 2006... and since they have to be blogging by 2007 (wasn't that the rule...??) they really have to get moving, so they might as well have Active Rain be their 2007 New Years Resolution. Or is that by the end of 2007 they need to be blogging?

hmmm I am going to make some New Years Resolutions for other Active Rainers.

All Real Living Active Rainers have to join the Real Living group on Active Rain and start participating and saying how "awesome Real Living is." I resolve more of my office joins Active Rain and those that joined participate. And everyone blog occasionally about how "awesome HER Real Living is."

Everyone I invited to Active Rain who has not started participating needs to put getting involved on Active Rain on their New Years Resolution list ... it looks like Don Fabrizio Garcia is psychic and is already starting on his 2007 New Years Resolution...to participate on Active Rain... ooooh maybe some will... Mike "Hogs-Head" Bosela showed up on Active Rain today.. accepting my invitation....but I can't find his profile. Fred Pickard is on Acrtive Rain!!

I resolve Sara Lipnitz really comes back to Active Rain. I saw someone else today who has not blogged since 10-25... but I can't remember who...

DEC

2006

I have a new years resolution for real estate bloggers, well actually I have 2

1. It doesn't matter what your broker/manager thinks about your blog, if it works and generates leads keep blogging.

2. Resist the urge to blog about blogging or about yourself.

I'd like to add to Lloyd's list for broadcasters: How 'bout the media goes back to REPORTING the news, rather than MAKING the news. And reporting on the latest melt-down by a celebrity is NOT really news!

Here's my suggested resolutions for others:

Zillow and Trullia: Resolve to only show correct data, market prices, and comps.

Realtor.com: Resolve to bring your program up-to-date! Criminy ... it's 2007!

Inman News: Resolve to support Realtors® more and the latest up-start dot.com, less.

DOJ: Resolve to actually work with a full-service agent while they're trying to complete a transaction with a minimum service firm to fully understand why they don't like doing twice the work for half the money. It's got nothing to do with not wanting the competition, it's about having to do THEIR work.

As for me, I don't do resolutions because I never keep them. ;-)

Inman loves anti Realtor companies.

I would resolve never to blog about zillow again, but my first zillow post is my most highly viewed post I've had on my other blog in two years. So its hard to say never.

Elaine: Great resolutions for others! Does Trulia have home values on their site? I did not think they did. I thought Trulia was mapping and listings linking back to the brokerage.

MF: Your highest viewed? WOW. Blogging about Zillow pro or con does become addictive because of the traffic spikes but if it is just other REALTOR® bloggers who cares.. but the traffic feels good.

Don't get me wrong but I think Inman supports technology advances whether they come from a real estate company (REALTOR® or not), some dot.com geek (is that synonomous with anti-REALTOR®?) I just think there is not a lot to write about coming from within the industry....and they gotta publish something every day....

I had not been to Trulia yet so checked it out yesterday on a specific listing. First, it was hard to find - had to seriously narrow my search to avoid sorting through a bunch of listings. Once I found the listing, it showed 'similar properties for sale'. None were similar because I'm familiar with the comps (ranches, 4BR's, etc.). It showed a trend graph for other 3BR homes that have sold in that zip. Their graph showed prices about $40K below the subject home's price, but that is because the sold homes are old, small or foreclosed in other parts of the town. They also show the average $/sq ft which probably is incorrect given the comps they're using. Bottom line, I found it to be as inaccurate and misleading as Zillow. I was disappointed. Also, Help-U-Sell must have some special agreement as their listings are always at the top and only their logo appears.

I have not been to Trulia in awhile.. I went right after HER RL started adding our listings to Trulia. I know it was sparse and hit or miss... more reason for people to go to HERRealLiving.com for more info. I will have to go for a visit.

Well, brad inman founded homegain, right? My personal opinion is that homegain is anti agent because they just skim off the top and don't really add value. That is where I get the anti realtor sentiment.

Maureen F, I agree that Inman is very anti-realtor. They'll all the time giving some major press to the latest-&-greatest tech upstart that's going to eliminate us. Did you read their predictions for 2007 today?

They give a lot of bad info as well. Apparently a recent article suggested people stuff mailboxes with flyers. A Letters to the Editor notes that this is illegal. DUH! In fact, our little mail-truck lady sometimes puts a notice in our boxes asking us to report people who even attach flyers to the outside of our wooden boxes as apparently that's not allowed either.

These are anti-REALTOR®???? Was Home Depot a place to find dates?

"1. Housing will lose its sex appeal. TV shows on home improvements, weird Realtors and house flipping will be canceled. Home Depot will no longer be a popular place to find dates.

2. Wall Street will no longer be enamored with the mortgage market; investors instead will shift their focus to office buildings and help overbuild that market, only to move their attention elsewhere in 2008 (such as Cuba when it is finally economically liberated in 2007).

3. The National Association of Realtors will go direct to the consumer with its message, moving beyond simple ads and offering relevant buying and selling content on multiple mediums.

4. Move Inc., formerly Homestore, will find a new CEO when Mike Long retires after saving the company from its early accounting disaster.

5. Google and Zillow will go head to head in a fierce competitive battle to dominate the online consumer market. Google will add robust features and Zillow's traffic will soar. Watch for Zillow to start an offline ad campaign.

6. Real estate search site Trulia will be acquired after building one of the largest search sites to date for home listings.

7. A raft of discount brokers will go out of business. Tough markets will squeeze out many who just started during boom years as sellers grow more willing to pay top dollar to get their homes sold.

8. RealEstate.com will either acquire a big broker or abandon its offline brokerage experiment.

9. The number of MLSs will drop in half as consolidation becomes necessary, not just interesting.

10. Inman News Publisher Bradley Inman will retire again (for about two weeks this time)."

NAR a trade organization will start talking directly to the consumer? Through multiple mediums? The number of MLS's are going to drop in half in a year? That's quick!

I missed the idea of stuffing letters in mailboxes, Inman's out of touch maybe.....

MF: HomeGain loved REALTORS® Or their money anyway.

For Zillow? - Try to get 1 out of 100 zestimates to be accurate.

For HomeGain? - Time to up your referral fee yet again, go for 45% so more agents go broke.

For Realtor.com? - Try to actually care about the agents, not just saying you do.

For real estate bloggers? - Focus on the consumer!

For buyers? - The interest rates are great, stop expecting them to go back to 5%.

For sellers? - Try to understand that what you paid for your home, what you invested into improvements, and what you "need" to get out of it have nothing to do with its value.

Do you have a New Years resolution for the real estate industry? Less agents to start the year, and a decent rebound fills the Hondros classes to capacity.
For Zillow? Continued improvement sends them toe-to-toe with Google and they get smacked around
For HomeGain? mama always said if you have nothing nice to say, then don't ....
For Realtor.com? Is this still around?
For real estate bloggers? The numbers will swell and the quality will remain the same
For buyers? eventually, they'll realize that this is a GREAT market to purchase in, lots of inventory and good interest rates.
For sellers? Wake Up and smell the coffee!

Personally, I don't like New Year's Resolutions. I do make goals this time of year, and work to meet my goals each year. But they are not "resolutions" per say.

Come on you guys... You can do better than this!

Resolve to bring your program up-to-date! Criminy ... it's 2007!
Try to actually care about the agents, not just saying you do

Let's see some real suggestions for Realtor.com. What do you wish the site did better?

(I'm not saying it couldn't be improved by the way, I'm just curious what improvements this tech-savvy group would like to see!)

DEC

2006

Ken: Do you do Realtor.com? How could /would Realtor.com show they care about RE agents?

Toby: You wrote "Less agents to start the year, and a decent rebound fills the Hondros classes to capacity." Less agents? Should it be harder to get a RE license? Are you saying less agents in January but business as normal by mid year with the RE schools pumping out new licensees? Should the "old dinosaurs" get out of the way of the new agents to provide "Less agents to start the year"?

Dustin wrote: "this tech-savvy group" ?? I think you must have us mixed up with someone else... Isn't Active Rain for non tech savvy real estate agents? Isn't AR the AOL of real estate blogging? Outside of Charles, Ken, Lenn and a few notable exceptions we are just normal RE agents here on Active Rain for the most part... not all that techy... forgive me to anyone who is displaying cutting edge technology....on Active Rain and I've missed it...

p.s. I am off to focus on the consumer...Ken told me to...

Maureen I do use R.com and it is profitable for me. I think they could show that everything isn't just lip service by actually doing some upgrades that are not only intended to increase revenue opportunities. They have added multiple things over the last few years, but none of them improved the basic function of R.com, only new ways to charge agents more money.

The sad thing is if they would improve they could easily get more agents to sign up and improve their bottom line. Give a quality product and the agents will come back, keep trying to find ways to hit us up for more money and watch the site die a slow death.

Maureen: I would argue that the fact that you are blogging puts you in the tech-savvy side of the agent equation. My guess is that after blogging for as long as you have, you could even explain some concepts like SEO that would be foreign to most agents in the market!

Ken: give me some examples... According to all sources I've seen, the site is still the most popular real estate destination on the web. I have no doubt that Move is capable of creating and releasing new tools, but remember that before anything is released to go live on RDC (do you mind if I call it that?), it has to be approved by NAR. That's why I ask: What do you want to see?

Note that when I'm griping, I always try to offer at least an implicit solution! ;)

arguing and griping and you haven't been here 48 hours! RDC = Realtor dot com?

May we take the Gripes on AR to be New Years Resolutions for AR?

1. More than 5 a day (Matt says it won't happen because of spam)

2. Ugly (Matt says AR will get prettier... gee I had not noticed...the look of Localism bothered me but hey it is new... )

3. Reset old inActive Rainers (Matt says it won't happen...)

You can argue I should be able to explain SEO and other techy concepts after 16 months of blogging but even if I understand it somewhat I can't explain it...unless I can find just the right chart or graph. Or maybe it's won't.

Ahh, so the guy from RDC is calling AR ugly! I gotta laugh at that one. RDC (isn't that move) is one of the UGLIEST sites around. Talk about old fashioned looking...

This, by the way, is my 3,000th comment. I wanted to leave it somewhere special. And since you brought be here, you are the somewhere special.

wow I am honored... your 3000th comment? You are so far ahead of me.... I just had my 1500th recently and did not even know it. I think this is my 1523 rd. I just looked.

Carol Cohen has commented a lot.

Call me crazy but I think Localism is easy to read and that is the most important thing right now. I am sure the look will change over time, but I have already had a call! A lady who is in Colorado and moving her son here for school next Fall. BTW, welcome to the Rain Dustin - I'm heading over to see your posts now.

Dustin, since you're new, you might want to search R.com tags for all the posts that have already been done on the subject. One of the most comprehensive was a blog by Jeff Turner. The comments on that one are more specific. You can play "catch up" to our complaining. You should also read Brian Brady's post on "Smoking" which deals with Zillow but R.com came into the discussion as well.

Dustin, here's another blog you should read by Angus.

Thanks Elaine for the good blog posts to check out!

And Maurine, I don't blame you a bit for getting pissy with me, considering I'm the new guy offering criticism to your neighborhood... But I just through I'd clarify that RCG is not part of Move. It is a site that I own (with my wife) and operate completely independent of anything I do at Move. There is no way Move would ever endorse or encourage some of the stuff that Ardell talks about! LOL!

Hmmm. Is he talking to Maureen McCabe? It's her blog. Or was Maureen Francis pissy? Either way, I think we (both Maureens) know the difference between rain city guide and RDC (realtor.com) which was an abbreviation I thought Dustin first used somewhere.

I wasn't pissy, btw. I was honestly amused because I do think realtor.com is UGLY and awkward. But don't take that personally. The reputation of RCG and your work there is well known-and respected!

No worry Mo in MI he is talking about Maurine... SHE musta said something pissy about RCG and then removed it (whomever she is) because I see no reference to RCG and everyone knows Rain City Guide, although I have noticed at least one Rainer (Active Rain nothing to do with RCG) who did not know who Dustin Luther is... I said psst...that's DUSTIN LUTHER...of RCG... she recognized RCG.

Dustin... we just took down the small shrine to Rain City Guide we'd erected in one corner of Active Rain the other night when you joined... we did not want to embarass you...

I did ask if RDC meant Realtor dot com....

There's probably far more than one Rainer who doesn't know who Dustin is. I had never heard of him until I began seeing his comments on a few posts that I also read, and I also noticed he was the one that apparently got Ardell to join in on the fun in the Puddle.

Ann

DEC

2006

You knew Rain City Guide though didn't you Ann? I knew Rain City Guide before Ardell started blogging there. I don't know if I had read it before I started blogging.... but it was one of the first I started reading when I was trying to blog...and figure out what blogging was about.

Here's one of my all time favorite Active Rain posts about Realtor.com I loved Jim Lee's series on the history of Realtor.com that inspired Craig Schiller to write this ... the lumbering oaf post.... confusion about what is NAR and what is Realtor.com not withstanding... I love the title and the photo and how well Craig handled it... I know it doesn't really offer solutions to what Realtor.com should be but