Category Archives: Real Estate
Neighbor house switcheroo…
#VT – Sadly, I will soon be selling my large house in the village. I very much want to stay right here. If you are selling, or know of anybody who is or might be selling a small (2 bedroom?) house or condo in Richmond Village, please contact me. Thank you.”
Posted by Joanna on the Richmond Front Porch Forum. The next day, she received from Christy…
Hi Joanna – We have a 2 bedroom townhouse that we love, but that we will eventually outgrow. We’ve been looking for homes in the village… we’d love to stay here. Have you already sold your house?
Joanna shared with us just today…
I am thrilled to report that, two months after my initial FPF posting, I purchased the townhouse and Christy and her family purchased my home. Amazingly we each found the perfect home and we were able to sell our homes without ever putting them on the market. Thank you, Front Porch Forum!
Neighbors like to talk about real estate
Lots of real estate moves through Front Porch Forum… houses and commercial properties for sale, apartment and office space for rent, families searching for information about neighborhoods, school, homeowners discussing property values and taxes, etc. FPF helps neighbors connect about whatever it is they’d like to discuss… and real estate is a consistent theme.
From Daily Real Estate News today…
There are sites and tools out there that are more directly focused on location: the online places where people talk about their physical places. Some of these are simply Facebook pages. But some are more specialized.
My favorite example is always Burlington, Vt.’s Front Porch Forum,… [which] is broken down by neighborhood. The only people talking on the list are actual neighbors. It’s super useful, but not very common.
Owning a similar social media site like this would be a strategic advantage in towns where it doesn’t already exist. It would be like a newsletter, but instead of being a social product it would be a social activity.
Local Search API List
Posted today on Local SEO Guide…
Just posted the following list of local search api’s on SearchEngineLand. I am going to be maintaining the list here and will be updating it from time to time.
Reaching beyond social media’s “Big Three”
Inman News columnist Gahlord Dewald posted a piece today aimed at real estate professionals about how they might make the most of social media tools. This clip caught my eye…
… If you expand beyond the “Big Three” social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you might find very specific platforms that align with your goals. For example, in Burlington, Vt., we have an awesome forum system called Front Porch Forum. This platform is highly targeted by neighborhood and operates via (wait for it …) e-mail.
Not what you might think of when you think super-new-cool technology. But FPF is a highly valued resource in our town. About 40 percent of the local population are members (and this is a college town). The neighbors talk about the neighborhood. Pretty relevant for a real estate professional.
Spending the time to locate active social media platforms that are topic-focused — to round out your me-focused Facebook-LinkedIn-Twitter participation — is a good idea…
Homethinking compares neighborhoods across cities
More from Peter Krasilovsky today…
Homethinking, which rolls out a service today that lets users compare neighborhoods in cities. An art gallery lover in Soho, for instance, might find the 7th street corridor in Washington D.C. to be their place. Gramercy Park is considered a match for Nob Hill in San Francisco.
“All Experts” Recommend Front Porch Forum
Just stumbled across this exchange posted on AllExperts.com… (thanks David!)…
Expert: David Beckett
Date: 8/27/2008
Subject: Temporary HousingQuestion
Hi David – I read your answers about Burlington and my husband & I decided to move here from Los Angeles a few months ago… We love it here. I am French and we need to go back to France for family reasons from November through March 2009 and I would hate to leave the house empty for a host of reasons.Ideally we could rent the place (we have a beautiful 4 bedroom house in the Hill section) but I am not sure where to post an ad. The other option would be to have a professional come on a regular basis to ensure that everything is OK (i.e. heating still on). Do you have any recommendations for either solutions?
I assume we are not the only people to leave Vermont in the winter, I was just curious if there were any obvious resources available that we are not aware of.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Answer
Hello Isabelle – Glad you like Burlington! … You might also post a note on your “Front Porch Forum” email list, without your address of course, just asking if neighbors have people to recommend as short term renters or housesitters. If you haven’t gotten onto your neighborhood “Front Porch Forum” yet – I recommend it. You can read archives and sign up at http://www.frontporchforum.comPlease feel free to contact me directly – I’m happy to help. I live in your neighborhood.
MacMansion’s future? Our next slum?
I’ve always been fascinated by grand old mansions in various U.S. cities that have fallen on hard times… whole neighborhoods that, over a couple generations, go from being the toniest side of town to the slum. And solid middle class homes too. How temporary it all is.
So Christopher B. Leinberger‘s current Atlantic article, “The Next Slum?” easily caught my attention…
Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading…
In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento… many [of the houses] once sold for well over $500,000. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residents’ association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, “There’s been gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years.”
He lays out how the subprime mortgage mess, the increasing demand for urban living and resulting gentrification, and the inefficient design of suburban living will combine to vacuum the upper and middle class out of many suburbs, leading she ‘burbs toward chopped up rental housing, poor schools, etc. Over time, the suburbs will see similar decline to what our inner cities did in the 1960s and 70s.
In thinking about the thousands of neighborhoods that turned over or were emptied out due to “white flight” and wholesale demolition (a.k.a. “urban renewal”), I wonder about the people, the community, the relationships… so much lost. A much quicker version of this occurred in New Orleans with Katrina’s deadly arrival.
Well… I recommend the Atlantic article.
About Blog
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more
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