Rain City Guide

Last week an agent said to me, “I have had the same 6 or 7 buyers and sellers for the last 4 months.”  Reminded me of a waitress who couldn’t “turn a table” because the same people stayed all night long.
I decided to track homebuyer activity to see how many buyers who have been looking [...]

Dustin, Jillayne, Rhonda, Galen and I were all in San Francisco for a few days for The Inman Connect Conference.  One of the most profound and spot on statements I heard at the Conference was “If you do not have a listing, right now, in THIS market (top-heavy with inventory)…turn in your license!”. Sorry I can’t remember [...]

……..selling uncoventional listings otherwise known in the real estate world as “Mobile Homes.”
You think to yourself…pshttt. Yeah, you laugh. You say, “whatever. That’s not going to make me a listing star or a top producer!”
Guess again. You may find this hard to believe, but one of the top two producing [...]

We “dog food” our real estate search product at Estately (we use it like a consumer): I subscribe to a couple of daily email alerts, a constantly updating RSS feed showing properties as they come onto the market near my house, and I subscribe to a feed of my saved homes to see when they [...]

Cue up the Ennio Morricone music and head for the hills! There’s been some recent talking among the town folk, about the feeding frenzy that’s happening out there on the wild web of the west. Let’s just say San Miguel will never be the same once the schema with no XSD enters town.
Just when you [...]

Zoomf, a clever British real estate search site, overestimates the eagerness of American real estate agents to post their listings on other sites (emphasis mine):
If you look at the US market, listing your properties in as many places as possible is firmly engraved as part of every agents mindset. US agents are blogging, using social [...]

I’ve been asked to speak before the California Association of Realtors (CAR) committee on MLS/Computer and Business Technology this Thursday in Sacramento, CA and I’m just now coming to the conclusion I may be in over my head! Despite the slightly off-topic nature (California MLS issues as oppose to Seattle MLS [...]

Another day, another Redfin story:
The Northwest Multiple Listing Service has fined Redfin $50,000 and asked the company to stop publishing a popular blog in which the online real estate brokerage posted reviews of Seattle-area homes.
(”Asked” is probably a bit kind since the consequence of non-compliance was for Redfin to loose their ability to display [...]

Galen of Shackprices (and a frequent RCG contributor!) just announced some new features on Shackprices, including feeds for your saved homes and/or saved searches…

Last week, a Seattle-area woman contacted us out of the blue asking if we advertise FSBOs and FSBO open houses on ShackPrices (we don’t), which led to a back-and-forth exchange that went sort of like this:
Me: Out of curiosity, why don’t you list your home in the MLS for $400 and get a lot more [...]