Not long ago I was spending a lot of time responding to information requests on City-Data.com forum for North Carolina. I was taking great care to not violate the terms and conditions of the forum by advertising my real estate services, but I felt uncomfortable hiding the fact that I was a Realtor®.
I had carefully not inserted any links to my Realtor® site. Most of the responses that I did for people took well over an hour each. The last post which I did which I believe was removed was about flooding.
Someone wanted to move close to the coast but was afraid of flooding. I took the time to refer them to a link at FloodSmart.Gov which defines flood risk. I mentioned that any Realtor® would have access to flood zone maps which they would be glad to share on a particular property.
I even did a screenshot from our MLS to show what the flood zones looked like for my own neighborhood so that the person could see that not all lots in a neighborhood are usually in a flood zone.
I suggested that one of the reasons we had located where we are in western Carteret County is the ease of evacuation compared to places like Hatteras Island where there is a single road which can close quickly. We have a four lane road to Interstate 40 and can normally be on I40 before some of the more eastern parts of the county can even get to where we live.
As I and others suggested, unless the storms are really severe, there is often more danger of flooding in the mountains. In fact I even linked to an article about flooding in West Virginia during a recent nor' easter that moved inland. Having lived in Roanoke, Virginia for years, I am very aware of how fast mountain flooding can happen. People in West Virginia in the April 2007 storm had to do an emergency evacuation at 2 am in the morning.
In my post I also talked about how winds can cause the large sounds like Pamilico to back up and flood.
In fact just tonight, I received this warning which is exactly the situation that I was trying to describe.
"02 PM EDT Sat may 5 2007
...Coastal Flood Warning in effect from 4 PM Sunday to 2 PM EDT
Tuesday...
...Coastal Flood Watch no longer in effect...
The National Weather Service in Newport/Morehead City has issued
a coastal Flood Warning...which is in effect from 4 PM Sunday to
2 PM EDT Tuesday. The coastal Flood Watch is no longer in effect.
The gradient between strong high pressure building south out of
eastern Canada and developing low pressure off the North Carolina
coast will lead to storm force winds of 45 to 55 knots from the north
and northeast across the Pamlico Sound late Sunday into early
Monday...with winds decreasing by early Tuesday. The strong winds
will produce water levels of 5 to 7 feet above normal and moderate
to potentially major sound side flooding over portions of eastern
Carteret...southern Craven...and eastern Pamlico counties. "
At the end of the post I mentioned that I was a Realtor ® and would be glad to answer any other questions. I never offered to sell them anything. For providing all that information, I was banned from the City-Data forum since that was construed as advertising my services as a Realtor®. At the time of the post, I actually didn't have any listing of my own since I am new to real estate.
My Coastal Paradise site was getting a lot of traffic from City-Data and some terrific comments from people about the usefulness of my posts. Over 8,000 people had read them in a just a couple of weeks. Actually I'm still getting traffic even though I can't do new posts.
After my banishment, I went back and checked the stats to my sites. I found hundreds of visits to my CoastalNC.org site but only one visit to my Realtor® site from the forum's domain. I figure the only person from the forum who ever visited my real estate site was the moderator. As far as I am concerned that lack of traffic was hard evidence that I didn't market my services.
When I joined the forum, I didn't bother to hide my identity. My user name was my last name and my first initial. I later found that most people on the forum were hiding behind "handles." It didn't take long to understand why. I found some people considered themselves experts on every place in North Carolina. One person took a broad swipe at all small mountain towns in North Carolina and included Mount Airy, NC where our family home was and where we had a second home in 2003 & 2004. I politely explained that from living in Mount Airy, I could easily say that their perceptions of the town were wrong. In fact the people who bought our family home and turned it into a Bed & Breakfast were just the kind of people the anonymous poster said would never live in Mount Airy.
Given all of that, I wonder why people are so afraid of real estate agents and real local experts? I have found good real estate agents invaluable in helping me find the right spot whenever I moved. The last person I would trust is someone who doesn't have a name. I have never been afraid to knock on a neighbor's door and ask their opinions before doing an offer. Being shy and trusting hearsay doesn't make a lot of sense when you are investing in a home.
It's a wonder to me in this age of full disclosure blogs that there are people who would rather trust their fates to some unknown experts. It is more than little funny in my case, since whenever I comment on Microsoft stock in my blogs, I take the time to mention that I own a few shares. I guess I would rather shake the hand of a local expert, look them in the eye and then evaluate their expertise by what they have to show me than trust my fat to someone who is only a handle on the Internet.
The one other thought that I have is that perhaps people who believe in information by unidentified "experts" aren't that serious about moving anyway. Perhaps they are just playing "what if" in the fantasy world of the Internet. They likely will never follow any of the advice. With that in mind, anonymous advice is fine.
Trusting real local expertise is actually a strategy that has worked well for me and my wife over the last 30+ years. The only time we messed up on buying a property, we did it without a Realtor®.
I've added some more thoughts on fear of expertise at my Ocracoke Waves Blog.
Real Estate Agent
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