60646 Blog

This just in from ibegin.com:

Late fall and early winter are always appropriate times for Realtors to do some of the things that we can’t seem to find the time for during the busy season, such as business planning for the next year, and gathering receipts and documentation for the next tax filing (which will arrive sooner than you may think).

This year, I am working on an additional project: Remodeling 60646 Blog! And I’m not talking about a measly face-lift. I’m talking about big changes under the hood, behind the curtain, etc. In other words: A gut-rehab.

This was necessary, because a lot of the things that I’d like to accomplish with this blog are reaching technical limitations. This blog is hosted by WordPress, arguably the finest blogging platform on the face of the earth. With hundreds of thousands of bloggers using WordPress as their blog host, there are some technical limitations that WordPress has to put in place, to ensure the security of their platform for the good of their entire community. And that means, for instance, that scripts cannot be utilized. WordPress, in their infinite wisdom and genius though, have made their blogging software freely available to bloggers who would like to operate their blogs on other hosts, without any of these technical limitations.

And that is the way I’m going with 60646 Blog. Starting in January 2008, 60646 Blog will be self-hosted (and still WordPress-based), with a (mostly) new face, and some neat changes under the hood. If you’ve gotten used to perusing the inventory of homes for sale in Edgebrook and Sauganash (about 7,500 unique views since June 2007), you will continue to see that on the new 60646 Blog. In addition, you will have access to browsing the entire MLS of Northern Illinois (map- and criteria-based) through the RE/MAX interface. You won’t want to miss our new RE/MAX Neighborhood Valuation Report (move over Zillow) at your fingertips. More videos about homes, listings, and happenings in 60646 in general, will be forthcoming. In short, I am excited to announce “60646 Blog – Reloaded”. Stay tuned for the unveiling in a few weeks. There’s no “trailer” for it, but take a peek at the preliminary new (alpha) look of 60646 Blog, below.

You don’t know this, but I worked out the entire month of October in anticipation of turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, apple pie, you name it. The problem is that I won’t have enough time to lose the post-Thanksgiving weight gain ahead of Christmas. I guess I just have to delay that until January. I hope it snows hard.

Best wishes to all readers of 60646 Blog for a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Sometimes I can’t help but speculate that Cook County government, in its insatiable appetite for revenue, has hired a couple of people whose jobs primarily consist of coming up with unorthodox ways of finding additional sources of money (which can then be used for cronyism). I already knew that banks are pretty good at this revenue-game, but Cook County must have hired a few bankers lately, because it appears as though now they’re going to levy fees for mortgage companies who pay property taxes on behalf of their customers. I say that because here’s a letter that I received from my mortgage company a few days ago:

Doug Quance, a broker colleague from Atlanta has been observing the pricing tactics of a newly established car wash in his neck of the woods. From his observations, he draws some, imho brilliant, parallels to the housing market that many home sellers find themselves in, today. Excerpt from his post:

The car wash owners obviously realized that the market did not accept their initial price – no matter how much promotion they had done… and they responded with price adjustments. Home sellers should take note of this market economics fundamental.

You can read Doug’s post in its entirety here.