Paul Krugman validates* what I’ve been saying to clients/readers/prospects for some time.

Any serious reduction in American driving will require more than this — it will mean changing how and where many of us live.

My belief is this - properties that are closer to urban cores - roughly defined as having a coffee shop/grocery store/park/gathering place - will appreciate at a greater rate than those that require more driving to get to said urban centers.

Using back-of-the-napkin math - if when gas costs five bucks a gallon -

If driving to the store/work/etc costs an additional ten to fifteen dollars for those properties not close to urban centers, and the properties the are close to urban centers are able to save that gas money - isn’t it reasonable to conclude that that theoretical savings of three to five hundred dollars a month would then be applicable to one’s mortgage payment?

I am seeing a contraction of the geographic area I service, and clients are now asking more and more about bikeabilty, walkability and public transport. Higher gas prices are likely to impact our business in fundamental ways - among them -

- Business models - buyers pay up front or do more legwork on their own. Hybrid Redfin models or derivations thereof may become more popular and prominent.

- Denser suburbs and fewer exurbs

- Increased taxes - property tax and sales tax - to increase infrastructure, thus affecting affordability

- Fewer Realtors and real estate agents as more discover that the Realtor pot of gold is harder to find.

- MLS’s may have to change their restrictions on neighborhood and area photos and videos - consumers (and Realtors!) want to see more than what is currently offered. If MLS’ want to remain the primary point of contact, they will have to adapt and provide more. Including or excluding properties without physically visiting properties will be more and more important.

- More boutique brokerages will emerge and thrive as the cost of doing business becomes too great for many of the bigger brokerages.

When we are looking back at this recession in five years with the benefit of hindsight, what opportunities will we be thankful we took advantage of? What opportunities will we wish we had seen and seized?

A question for the Virginia Realtors - are you seeing this trend happen now? Are you seeing your market area contract due to gas prices’ precipitous increase?

Could Realtors use this opportunity to advocate for alternative methods of transportation in new developments? Just a thought.

* Don’t shut down as soon as you see Paul Krugman’s name. Sure, the NYTimes has a unique slant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the information presented in this article is not relevant, applicable and true.

The original article by Jim Duncan on 20 May 2008 on Agent Genius

Related reading:

Could Higher oil prices be a good thing?

High Gas prices are good

Downtown Real Estate Bypasses Housing Crisis: Gas Prices Are Making City Centers More Attractive

The Oil-to-Mortgage-Rates Chain Reaction

At some point we may start a regular tech-tip thing. For the moment — and to gauge reaction — here’s this:

When you’re referring to a decade, it’s common practice to write it like this: the ’60s, the ’80s, etc. Problem: If you use Microsoft Word (and other word processors), it automatically converts the straight quote into a “smart quote” — aka “curly quote,” “typographer’s quote.”

So instead of having an apostrophe, you end up with the quote mark facing the wrong way.

I.e., you have this:

when you should have this:

Luckily, there’s an easy way to get an apostrophe instead of a quote. Instead of just hitting the quote key, hold down Ctrl and hit the quote twice. Once you’ve done it once or twice, it’ll be easy to write about all those groovy times.

Still using 1990s-style voice mail and phone services? It’s upgrade time; here are a couple of cool tools to add some 21st century features to your telephone. (Extra cool, in fact, ’cause they’re free.)

First is YouMail.

Ever agonized over the right tone in an outgoing voice mail message — should you sound bone-dry and uber-professional, or should you inject a lighter tone? Do you want them to know how busy you are, or do you want to be generic?

Why not do it all? That’s the basic function of YouMail: Sign up for an account and when people call your cell number they’ll get a different greeting depending on who they are.

As the site puts it, "Be fun with your friends, sweet to your sweetie, and professional with your boss."

You can also get your messages via e-mail and listen to them on the YouMail Web site. So if you forget your phone, at least you can still get your calls.

Then there’s one of the most popular features: Disconnect certain callers (you know who I mean) without even given them a chance to leave a message. That’ll teach ‘em.

* * *

Second is Google’s GrandCentral. It works like this: You create an account and choose a phone number (it’s free and you get lots of area codes to pick from). Then you set that number to ring whatever phones you want it to.

That means when someone calls your GrandCentral number, it can ring your office phone, cell phone, and home phone at the same time. No more call forwarding, and you can change your settings via the GrandCentral Web site on a whim.

Even better, you can create groups for incoming numbers, so that, say, if a family member calls it rings all your phones, but if anyone else calls it only rings your work and cell numbers. (Or if your boss calls, it goes right to voice mail. :-)

Speaking of voice mail, GrandCentral does that, too. Not only can you access it from a phone, you’ll also get an e-mail or text-message notification so you can listen on the GrandCentral Web site from any Internet-connected computer.

There are a bunch of other neat features, too: custom rings, call screening, receive free calls via the Web, etc. I’ve been using it since I moved to Richmond five months ago, and my GrandCentral number is the only one I give out. (I don’t think my wife even knows our "real" number, ’cause we never use it.)

It’s a great way to connect all your phones without having to remember or list multiple numbers.

And did I mention that it’s all free? Google said it’s going to stay that way, too, but it will be adding some premium features you’ll have to pay for.

(Check out the site. If you decide you want to try it and need an invitation, drop me a note at Andrew at varealtor dot com and I’ll hook you up. (5/15: Invites are currently unavailable.))

All the kids are on MySpace these days. (Well, Facebook, actually — MySpace is yesterday’s news.) It’s all about “social networking,” which is a fancy way of saying “Online communities where everyone shares what they’re doing with other people.”

But you’re a grownup.

Nothing against Facebook or MySpace, but they don’t exactly scream “Professional.” Sure, lots of people and organizations have pages there — including VAR — but folks with real jobs aren’t quite the target audience.

For professionals, there’s LinkedIn. And if you haven’t signed up yet, you really should.

It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Facebook or MySpace, but you won’t find gaudy hot-pink pages, either. LinkedIn is about connecting professionals. You can even join a LinkedIn group for VAR members to help you find other Virginia REALTORS®.

In your profile you’ll specify where you’ve worked and went to school, and LinkedIn will tell you who else has those places in their profiles. Then you can send a message asking to be connected: “Andrew, a former colleague at PC Magazine, would like to add you to his network on LinkedIn…”

Once you’re connected with someone, you can see her connections, and so on, all the way back to, presumably, Kevin Bacon.

What next? If you want to get in touch with someone at a particular company (to job hunt, find a resource, or whatever), you might find someone on LinkedIn fits the bill. Then you can ask for an introduction.

It’s not much different than asking all your friends and relations, “Does anyone know someone who works at Bank of America?” except that you can see who everyone knows.

It becomes, “Charlie, can you introduce me to Beth Jones at Bank of America?”

And if nothing else, I speak from experience when I say that when you get yourself on LinkedIn, you’ll begin to find yourself in touch with a lot of people from the old days.

I want to be a better listener.

It’s not just technology — it’s a cultural shift in how Realtors work. Technology is easy; how this and the next generation of Realtors accept and implement it is often the deal-killer.

The past few weeks have brought more technologically-savvy clients my way. Not unsurprisingly, both have used Google tools to help themselves (and me) Here’s what I want -

First - why Google? Because it’s free and accessible. Did my clients both seek out Realtors to help them relocate to my area? Yes.

The first buyers interviewed a couple of Buyers Agents and ended up selecting me. As part of the process, they emailed me a published Google Doc with their already-trimmed-down list of specifications - preferred location, what they want to be close to, what their needs and wants are and their “would like to haves.”

The second buyers, through the process of our working together and narrowing down their search area/criteria, emailed me a link one day to a Google My Map with the things that are important to them. Schools, gym, grocery store, specialty grocery store, kids’ activities - and oh, yeah - houses pulled from Google Base - were all on the map.

I want the consumer’s search to be as powerful as mine, while keeping all the protected information necessarily behind “Realtor” lines (lockbox codes for generic lockboxes, alarm codes, “seller is out of town,” etc.)

I want background checks on Realtors to validate their ability to keep safe said private information.

I want the search to allow overlays of important data - crime, Walk Score, GIS information, neighborhood boundaries, and more, and I want to be able to share that search with my clients, readers, customers - and allow them to better narrow their searches, thereby allowing me to help them best - by listening and interpreting and advising.

Good Realtors do more than just search for homes - interpretation, guidance, advice, negotiation - client representation - is far more specialized than search.

(Posted here at request)

Looking for a way to set apart your property marketing?  Try adding floor plans!

A few months ago I discovered MetroPix, where you can design floor plans using their FREE online service.  You can pay a bit more for floor plans with color, or in three-dimensions, or with photos, etc., etc.  Thus far, I have only utilized their free service — and then added some color afterwards.

Do you know of other free floor plan drawing tools?  Let me know!

Hello … my name is Jeremy, and I’m a Twitter addict.  It started innocently enough - a Tweet here, a Tweet there, but then suddenly I needed more.

This is my story, my story of how Twitter became a business tool with a very real Return on Investment.

What’s your story?  Will I see you on Twitter?

Google Maps recently rolled out its new Street Level View service in Richmond, the first city in the Commonwealth to get it. Believe it or not, a Volkswagen Beetle outfitted with a 11-camera apparatus covered hundreds of miles in the Richmond area last fall to capture street-level photos of a large portion of the metropolitan area, literally snapping hundreds of thousands of pictures of entire neighborhoods.

Here’s how it works. Go to Google.com/maps and enter a street address in the Richmond area. Here’s a search for 10231 Telegraph Road, home of the VAR offices. A dialog box pops up and you can actually see a small thumbnail of the street level view on the search results page. As in the picture below:

Then, if you click that thumbnail, you’ll open up a larger window that you can use to navigate around the area. For a sample of the level of detail you can get, here’s a zoomed in shot of the VAR sign in front of our offices:

As long as you are in street view mode in Google Maps, anywhere you see a blue outline on the street, a street level view is available. Now your clients can show themselves around the neighborhood before deciding whether or not to look at a house. That could be one fewer showing to enter into VAR’s ideal route mapping tool!

Several times in recent weeks I’ve read blog posts horn-tooting about how the blogger had now achieved a certain number of friends on Facebook or connections on LinkedIn, and thanking their adoring fans contacts for helping them achieve that significant milestone. “Stop the presses!” I think to myself (an unfortunately anachronistic exclamation, in this case), trying to figure out why such self-serving announcements are remotely newsworthy — particularly in light of the fact that I’m betting a goodly number of those LinkedIn folks are people you’ve never met (See my friend Cindy Butts’ rather astute take on that phenomenon here). While I subscribe to that blog for a reason (I generally get value from the blogger’s opinions and perspectives), helping him rejoice in his large number of “friends” (I use the term loosely) is not that reason. So why is he clogging my feedreader with such useless, conceited pap? Get over yourself, I want to say.

This, I think, is different from achieving a milestone in terms of number of subscribers to your blog; even magazines brag about such things. Having a large number of people read you says something about your credibility, and is worth telling (though not too often).

But friends on Facebook or connections on LinkIn? I’m sorry, but I don’t care. Unless I should care, and I’m missing the point.

Am I missing a potentially beneficial opportunity to brag about how many friends I have on LinkedIn? (148 as of this morning, including a few I don’t really know, but I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.)

So as my friend (and VAR past president) Kit Hale of Roanoke likes to say: “Help me understand…”

photo credit: kellypuffs

Did you know?  In Virginia, out of the estimated 7.6 million residents, nearly one million speak a language other than English – about 13 percent of the population.

With markets in Virginia changing rapidly to include a multitude of nationalities, REALTORS® sometimes clamber to minimize the risk they take when working with a non-English speaking client while maximizing their ability to get the listing, make the sale, and nurture their relationships with clients.  With the introduction of a new benefit for VAR members, bridging a language barrier is a professional advantage that Virginia REALTORS® have that competitors don’t. 

Interpreters were not always readily available or affordable, but VAR members have a new tool to help them capitalize on the growing international market.  VAR has recently partnered with a Virginia-based company, LLE-Language Services, to provide discounted rates to Virginia REALTORS® for telephonic interpretation and document translation services in over 150 languages.  LLE has been in business since 1979 and is recognized nationally as a leading language services provider to government, business and non-profit organizations.  Their accurate and reliable telephone and face-to-face interpretation as well as document and e-mail translations are provided on a pay-as-you-go basis, making it that much easier for Virginia REALTORS® to accommodate a wider array of clients and customers. Now, VAR members can access LLE’s world-class services at a negotiated low price.

Communication breakdowns cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. And it’s not just the language that gets lost. The rapport, loyalty, and the productive business relationship are hard to create and maintain when languages separate the REALTOR® from the client.

Virginia REALTOR® Jo Anne Johnson, managing broker at Westgate Realty Group, Inc. in Falls Church, says most clients who do not speak English are uncomfortable trusting English-speaking REALTORS® – especially with financial information. Agents can’t figure out what houses to show clients if they can’t find out what the clients can and cannot afford to buy.

Having someone involved in a transaction who does speak both English and the clients’ language is handy, but as Sarah Stelmok, an associate broker with Century 21 New Millennium in Fredericksburg, explains, that’s not always the solution, either. Her Spanish-speaking buyers were doing great throughout most of a transaction with the aid of a Spanish-speaking buyer’s agent, but when it came down to presenting the HOA documents, the buyer’s agent wasn’t available, leaving Sarah’s team scrambling to try to find someone fluent in English and Spanish to help the buyers over the hump.

The competition for clients is fierce. Finding your edge is your key to building business, and with a growing segment of the home-buying public speaking another language these days, figuring out how to break that language barrier might not be a bad way to spend a strategy session or two, or at least to minimize risk and keep your non-English speaking client transactions on track.

Information about VAR’s new member service partner, LLE, can be found at www.VARealtor.com/LLE.