real estate

Austin Real Estate Investing Not Always Profitable

October 28, 2011

Sylvia and I just sold a couple of acreage lots that we purchased in Oak Hill back in Feb 2007. For those who remember, Austin’s real estate market was still running full tilt in early 2007. I bought three lots in a new subdivision, we built a new custom home on one of them and [...]

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Staying in Touch with Past Clients without being a Pest

September 27, 2011

One of the toughest things to balance as an Austin Realtor is finding the right frequency and methods for staying in touch with our past clients. On the one hand, we have the National Association of Realtor (NAR) surveys of buyers and sellers showing that over 90% of real estate consumers never hear from their [...]

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Austin Property Tours: Beneficial to Sellers and Listing Agents?

August 18, 2011

Today I attended a property tour for my listing in Great Hills. There were 11 homes on the tour, including our listing. The other agents on the tour were the listing agents for the other 10 houses. This gives us a chance to see each other’s listings and to offer feedback on pricing, staging, etc. [...]

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Navigating the Yelp Review Jungle for Real Estate Agents

July 9, 2011

Earlier this week someone I’ve never met, Paul B from Round Rock, blessed Crossland Real Estate with a disparaging 1-Star review on Yelp. It reads: Unprofessional and unpleasant demeanor.  General lack of realistic market knowledge and trends.  Probably better suited as a property manager, but lacks the proper people skills to be effective as either a [...]

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Austin House Hunting Gets Boost from Daylight Savings

March 12, 2011

If you’re currently searching for a home in Austin – not online but physically touring homes with an Austin Realtor – you know that one of your biggest limitations is available daylight time. That’s about to change over Spring Break as we move to daylight saving. Starting in Early November each year, sunset happens before [...]

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Austin Craigslist – A Real Estate Advertising Sewer

March 8, 2011

We don’t post ads on Craigslist. I’m not sure why any informed buyer, renter or seller would use Craigslist in Austin anymore, as it’s become a sewer of real estate scams and spammy garbage ads. If that’s not bad enough, Craigslist real estate ads in Austin represent the #1 subject of Ethics Complaints at the [...]

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What Does it Take to Succeed as a Realtor?

February 13, 2011

I was at the TAR (Texas Association of Realtors) Winter Meetings in Austin yesterday. One of the events I dropped in on was the Professional Development Open Forum. It was announced at the forum that the Texas Association of Realtors is going to start providing a pre-license course for those thinking of obtaining a real [...]

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Austin office market back to pre-recession levels

October 6, 2010

This from the Austin Business Journal today, Austin office market back to pre-recession levels. Let’s review a few snippets from the news article. The Austin office market saw a trifecta of positive developments in the third quarter with a dramatic boost in absorption, decrease in sublease and large corporate move-ins. The shift is the best [...]

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Will Web 2.0 Render the Full Service Real Estate Agent Obsolete?

March 18, 2010

I just wrapped up 5 days at SXSW Interactive. It was a fantastic conference with many great workshops, panels and discussion events related to technology, business, the internet and social networking. Much of it was relevant to the real estate business and small business in general, which surprised me.In fact, I attended two discussion workshops [...]

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Why I Don’t Like “Book Rate” Repair Vendors

May 4, 2009

My long time appliance repairman John at Austin Appliance informed me today that he’s only coming into Austin once a week now, and will eventually stop serving Austin altogether. He lives in Spicewood and mainly works Marble Falls now. Darn it. My veteran vendor team people keep getting older and retiring on me. John’s also [...]

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