Carbon Monoxide

by Bob Connors

Did you know that the Colorado Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate specifies in paragraph 10.8 that carbon monoxide detectors must be installed in the subject property?

If you are a home seller with their house currently on the market in Colorado, be sure that you have carbon monoxide detectors installed within 15 feet of each bedroom, or in a location as required by the applicable building code.

If you’re buying a home and notice that it does not have carbon monoxide detectors, you should understand that it’s the sellers obligation to install the detectors at their cost.  You should not be tricked into thinking that installation of carbon monoxide detectors is one of those negotiable items on your Inspection Objection Notice.

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The Peloton in Boulder

by Bob Connors

Last Thursday, The Peloton in Boulder announced they’d be matching the $8,000 tax credit from Uncle Sam, effectively dropping their prices by $8,000.  Good deal if you’re in the market for a cool Boulder condominium.

Search the available Peloton listings here, and feel free to call or email bob@realasave.com if you’d like more information, or to schedule a showing.

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Episode #39: Dump

by Bob Connors

Like many homeowners I like to take on a good remodeling project once in a while. I recently completely demolished our master bathroom as the first step in what is likely to be a many-month project to reconfigure and update this room.

I was careful to salvage as many of the working parts of the bathroom as possible: the sinks, copper pipe, faucets, shower pan, and toilet. Why? Because Boulder County has the wonderful Center for Resource Conservation. This is a great place for construction folks and home renovators to pick up salvaged construction items. And it’s a great way for us to keep our landfills from being clogged with these usable items.

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WordPress as a Platform: It’s More Than Just a Blog – Part 1

by John Noble

There are a lot of ways to start a website these days.  Every hosting company seems to have some tool to allow you to build a rudimentary site.   Some tout WYSIWYG creators or template systems, others integrate a blogging system of their own. Google has entered the fray with Google Sites and there’s always the tried and true Dreamweaver.

But what if you just want to get up and going– you know, take that first step and get some content out there?  You want your site to look good but you don’t want to have to edit every page by hand to get the content in there.  And what about updating content in the future?  You also want to have more control than some of the big blogging sites currently give you and have a solid platform for growth in the future.

Enter WordPress.   It’s not just blogging software you know.  With the blogging explosion in the recent past, WordPress was born and has grown some hefty legs along the way.  It has been steadily raising the bar in the past couple of years, and has moved from just a blogging system to becoming a platform.

By platform I mean that you can build sites with WordPress that are not just blogs, but are robust, flavorful sites with a lot of features and power.  And here’s the elements that make WordPress so powerful:

• A huge number of themes
• Tons of plugins
• Moderated multi user contribution
• Easy content creation
• Multi domain capable with WordPress Mu

If you install WordPress on your own server account, which isn’t hard, you then have ultimate control over this system allowing you to run ads or monetize your blog as you see fit.  Most of the big blog hosting sites out there just don’t give you this level of control.  Hosting companies like DreamHost, which is a green, carbon neutral company to boost, allow easy one-click install of WordPress to get you going fast.

In this series I’ll discuss each of the points outlined above to give you more detail on each facet of the platform so you can see the true power of WordPress.  Stay tuned for part 2 on themes.

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NAR Chess Game

by Bob Connors

There have been so many cool real estate sites popping up in recent years (Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc) that it seemed as if the monsters like Realtor.com were destined for obsolescence just as soon as the average consumer started trusting the new techno sites for their real estate search.  But not so fast.

The NAR announced a recent take over of Cyberhomes assets and data, and is revealing an interested long-term strategy to compete with these new kids on the block.  Will it work?  Maybe.  Who does it benefit?  See this awesome article on 1000 Watt Consulting for an in-depth analysis.

This news made me recall another incredible article/piece of news by the ever-entertaining and brilliant Notorious ROB where he discusses how a little guy (think local real estate agencies) may have suddenly delivered a potential knock-out punch to the tech-heavy real estate start-ups of the last 4 years.  In a nut-shell, ROB comments that a particular local real estate company has just unveiled a new website which competes and possibly exceeds the user experience and amount of data delivered by these tech start-ups.  Big deal, right?  Maybe not.

One thing is for sure: it’s an interesting time to be in the real estate industry.  Who will survive?  I’m not sure.  I know that I’m constantly amazed by some of the tech start-ups like Redfin and the now bankrupt BuySide Realty/Iggys House who receive all this VC money and ALSO offer deep discounts.  How can these companies be soooo top-heavy and programmer heavy and also offer deep discounts and also survive?  I don’t know.  I know that the only way we’ve survived while offering deep discounts is by offering a level of service that the above discounters don’t or can’t.  We’re basically offering the same service as a traditional agent, AND we offer discounts.  How?  Our overhead is almost non-existent, no multi-level management, no VC money, no standing staff of programmers.

But that’s not enough, is it?  No, I don’t think so.  I think that we also need to provide great service AND a great user experience on our website.  Which brings me back to the above point made by Notorious ROB: if little guys can deliver a big, satisfying punch on their websites then what will drive people to keep using the large tech sites?  The answer to that question remains to be seen, but if the age-old adage that “all real estate is local” is true (which i think it is), then the answer is: nothing.  If, in the near future, there’s no significant difference between the average local agent’s site in regards to data and user experience when compared to the big non-local tech sites, then there’s really nothing but recent momentum to keep carrying new users to those tech sites.  And momentum can change.

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