I've been reading a number of posts recently highlighting squabbles, disagreements, and frustrations regarding Active Rain in general, competing members, posts, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how we always seem to get to this point as these issues begin to work their evil magic, push to the forefront, and start to slowly suffocate the venue or platform being addressed.
I'm, relatively speaking, a new member, joining AR in the beginning of August 2008. As I've stated in previous comments on other blogs, I joined AR to network and interact with other real estate professionals as we are a residential real estate investment company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. As I've also stated before, I landed on the Active Rain website one evening while searching the Internet looking for "must use" sites to increase your online presence.
All too often these days, we seem to lose focus on what is of real importance. I'm not diminishing any of the posts that I've read and I'm not denying that many of the gripes are probably legitimate (in fact, I couldn't begin to relate to the circumstances that have resulted in creating most of these issues). However, in my opinion, when we lose focus and don't stick to the fundamentals problems eventually occur.
The latest housing boom in many real estate markets is a perfect example of what happens when we take and ruin a good thing by losing focus (amongst other issues, greed too - financial with real estate, points for AR members) and stray from the baseline fundamentals. It's great to be creative and think out of the box, but, at the end of the day, whatever we do has to center around the baseline fundamentals as it focuses the creativity around the relevant topic at hand.
The housing market is now slowly beginning to return to fundamental guidelines as is quite evident in many real estate business related operations. We can argue whether the measures and steps being taken are good, bad, or indifferent but at least we are starting to return to the fundamentals and the creative thinking / business opportunities are repositioning their efforts accordingly.
I've found a lot of great information and value from joining this site. As a "newbie" I firmly believe that this website will continue to grow and continue to be a powerful tool for real estate professionals if our efforts remain focused on all things Real Estate.
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