Real Estate Internet Technology

The worst threat to your public internet website

Author: Dave Halliwill

Think the worst threat to your public internet website is hackers? From my experience, not necessarily. I've been working with websites on the public internet for about 10 years now, and I have had my sites hacked. The hackers setup backdoor pages on my site for blackhat SEO purposes. It did create problems and it did cause me to lose my page rank with Google until I cleaned it up and kept it clean for a period of time, but I've had worse problems with my sites and the source of the problems might surprise you. My own hosting companies! Yes you heard right. My own hosting companies have caused more downtime and loss of data on my sites than hackers ever did.

My first problems came 6 or 8 years back while hosting with ipower. This company had rated fairly high when I started using them and I had no problems at first. But over time service slipped, and every time I found my Real Estate Website down or having problems, it was because of changes that the folks at ipower had made to my site. The final straw came when ipower undertook a hardware upgrade project and all my site's went down. I did some online researching and found out that the company had been sold. Apparently the new management just didn't have the same focus on service and keeping sites up. That was the end of hosting with ipower. It was clear they weren't concerned about providing the level of reliability that I needed.

Next I took all my sites - including my Real Estate web site - over to Midphase to be hosted. Midphase was pretty good at first and helpful in getting me setup. Just recently, however, we began having more problems with site errors and outages. Service seemed fragmented. We had VPS hosting, but VPS would often tell us we needed to talk to shared hosting and vice versa. Then I received a somewhat abrupt email on a Thursday that said my vps hosting was being migrated to another company - Westhost. It said my new sites had already been set up and that I should test and then repoint my domains when satisfied. I tested the next day and nothing worked. I put in a ticket and received an answer that I needed to talk to my registrar. I let follow-up get away from me, and on Monday morning, just 4 days after I received the email, they pulled the plug on my live sites. I then spent 2 days on the phone wth 2 different hosting companies - Midphase and Westhost - and around 6 or 8 different people just trying to get my site domains rerouted to the correct place. They took the stance that it wasn't really thier problem since they weren't the registrar for my name server record, but they had happily taken on the duties as registrar for some of my other sites, never indicating to me that they really wouldn't be able to service them. After finally re-routing my sites, it was discovered that none of the files for my most important site were available. They finally produced a database that had been taken around 8 days before the site went down (as if that would have been satisactory anyway). After waiting another day or so for either Midphase or Westhost to produce my files, I relented and retored a copy of my own which was - unfortunately - significantly outdated.

To cut to the chase, the hosting companies didn't have the level of concern for the uptime or restore capabilities of the sites that I would have hoped, and it now seems to me that the possibility a hosted site going down or it's data being lost is much more likely from actions taken by the hosting company rather than by any hackers out there.

I also learned that when you sign up for hosting with a company, you might want to have a conversation with them about their hardware life cycle refresh plan. That seems to be when things stat to get ugly.

Renewed Interest in Michigan Real Estate?

Author: Dave Halliwill

Could activity in the Real Estate market in Michigan have finally stopped falling? From lookiing at traffic on the remericasomersetrealty.com website, one might think so. After a couple of years of watching traffic decline - for a variety of reasons but undoubtably the Real Estate bust being one of them - I'm seeing some significant year over year increases in listing views from the first 4 months of 2010 to the first 4 months of 2011.

Getting your Real Estate Agents License in Michigan

Author: Dave Halliwill

I finally took the plunge and obtained my Michigan Real Estate Agent license. I mentioned it to a friend at work and he was interested in getting more information about what's involved, so I thought I'd put it out here because I figure there are other people that might also want background info on the step to obtaining their license.

The basic steps I went through for my agent's license were as follows:

- First, I completed a Real Estate Fundamentals Prelicensure course from Holloway's Real Estate Institute (www.hollowaysinstitute.com). They offer Real Estate classes all over the State, but I attended in Ann Arbor. The class was around $245 and is a full 40 hours of lecture so I was in class all week. There are other schools but I liked Holloway and my instructor, Bruce, was very good.

- Next, I submitted my applicaton for a Michigan Salesperson License at www.michigan.gov/icola. The fee for me was $62. I found that, since the state will only give your license to your broker, its best to have one already and you can then provide your brokers 10 digit ID when you fill out this application. Once you apply for the license you have one year to complete the process

- Third, I received authorization to take the Real Estate License test from the State of Michigan via email. This authorization included a 6 digit number (exam candidate MIRE) and examination registration instructions.

- I then went to www.psiexams.com and used the MIRE number provided by the state to register to take the Sate exam to receive my license. I knew I was getting close now.

- The last major step for me was to take and pass the exam. This was where, if I would have put down my broker 48 hours or more before taking the exam, I could have received a photo pocket license right at the exam when I completed it successfully. I had actually put down my broker, but he hadn't gone to the ICOLA site to approve me, so I couldn't get it.

- Finally, my wall and wallet licenses were mailed to my broker. I was in. Oh yea and besides getting my license I learned a lot too.

Problems with Craiglist Listings

Author: Dave Halliwill

I've been having problems putting listings into Craigs List lately. I noticed the issue some time ago and it still seems to be there. Essentially, when I put a listing in, it seems to go in, and looks fine when I go to the link directly, but it never seems to show up in the index for that city. The other day I put in one for some sizable Michigan acreage back home in south central MI (http://jxn.craigslist.org/reb/2344858717.html) and it didn't show up. Today, I did a Water Front Condo at Devils Lake (http://toledo.craigslist.org/reb/2349463953.html)and it's not also showing up. If anyone knows whats going on with that I'd love to hear it.

Major Acreage close to Detroit! A rarity

Author: Dave Halliwill

There's some beautiful coutryside that can can be seen from the little town that I grew up in. Rolling hills, farm land, and forest. Over the years it's been harder and harder to get tracts of any significant size, as they usually get divided up more and more and are just not available the closer you get to the Detroit area. So I was surprised to here from my mom that a large tract was available there. It's about 90 minutes from downtown Detroit. And some of the farmland is currently being leased for enough money to pay the taxes. Makes me wish I could come up with the cash for it.
http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/386.html

Lakefront Homes as low as they will probably get

Author: Dave Halliwill

It looks like Lake front homes are at very nice prices for people looking to buy these days. While prices may stay low for another year or two, it's also possible that they won't, especially here in Michigan where the Auto industry may be poised for a comeback. So if you've been waiting for the right time to buy that special lakehouse, be carefull how long you wait. As we say where I grew up, "there's only so much lake front"

Handling Obsolete Listings

Author: Dave Halliwill

I've been wondering for sometime about coming up with a better way to handle obsolete listings. When I originally set up the site, it only had the companies listings. When a listing became obsolete, the site was set up to display an index of listings when that particular page address was requested. When I started adding MLS listings, I did something similar. At first, the MLS Listings received good traffic through Google search, but it's tapered off. My suspicion is that, since all these page addresses eventually point to the same content, that Google is penalizing me for that. Likewise, I don't just want to throw out a "page not found" message for someone coming to the site. So I'm looking for alternatives. I think I might try adding the Google Canonical tag.

Where's the Date

Author: Dave Halliwill

I'm trying to figure out how to display the date on my blog comments. I can only see the time. Is the assumption that all comments would be same day?? Strange. If anyone can shed light on that for me please let me know.

Google Maps now has Real Estate Listings

Author: Dave Halliwill

If you hadn't noticed, Goggle Maps now has Real Estate Listings. To see what listings they have in the area your interested, go to http://maps.google.com and double click the map repeatedly to zoom in to the area your interested in. Next, click on the button titled "more". There should be a check box there that says "Real Estate" that you can check.



And here's a live link to this
Southern Michigan Google Real Estate Map

Here's how it looks as an iframe on your site:

View Larger Map

My First IFRAME, and it wasn't for Real Estate

Author: Dave Halliwill

I know IFRAMES gets used alot in Real Estate to display MLS listings, but I opted for a direct data feed with mine, so I never used IFRAMES for Real Estate Listings. Another opportunity came up for one of my other websites when a local paper asked if there was a way they could display trivia quizzes from another site that Innovative Ambitions owns. I thought of IFRAMES and went to work to see what I could come up with. This is just a rough first pass test, but let's see what it looks like. Here's a try at displaying one of our recent popular quizzes: Autumn Songs.

Even Google isn't perfect

Author: Dave Halliwill

Well, as I posted previously, my clients Real Estate website was dropped from the Google index early in 2008. The site had been hacked and had some blackhat SEO stuff added. I didn't catch it for a month or 2, then spent a couple more fixing and requesting reconsideration with Google. The pages went back into the index, and all was well. The clients site started coming up 1st for searches on "Remerica Somerset Realty". Case closed. Or so I thought.

Then late last year, or early this year, I noted something else. All the images at remericasomersetrealty.com had been dropped from the google image search index. Or at least thats all I can figure. Prior to the hack last spring the images from the site could be found in Google image search.

My assumption is that its not an issue with the Google algorythym, but rather with the Google re-inclusion process. I can't be sure, but when you have a site whose url is remericasomersetrealty.com, and it says "Remerica Somerset Realty" in the page title of the front page, and the upper left corner of every page on the site has an image whose filename is "remerica_somerset_realty.jpg" and the alt tag says "Remerica Somerset Realty" and the text on the actual image says "Remerica Somerset Realty", and the image shows up nowhere in Goggle image search results, but the site still shows up #1 for "Remerica Somerset Realty" in Google standard search, then I'd say that there's a relavency issue with this image search result, especially when you look at the other image search results that come up. And alot of them page 1 are nothing to write home about.

To be fair though, the Google system is extremely huge and dynamic, and everything can't possibly be fixed manually so I don't really fault Google. I just wish I could find a way to get my images back in the Google image search index. There's a process, and I've written them twice in the last 4 months, and been given no timeframe on how fast these requests get considered. :)

Interesting article and map in Zillow on home value changes

Author: Dave Halliwill

There's an article on Zillow that includes a map and shows the year over year housing value change using colored diamonds to allow you to get a really clear picture nation wide. No surprise to anyone keeping up. Florida, California, and the east coast appear hit the hardest (I.e values down) with a few down pockets around Detroit, Chicago, Green Bay and Minneapolis also down 13 to 20%, and Ann Arbor Michigan being hit especially hard. Prices across the heartland and mid south appear to have held value pretty well. How does that expression go? Our strength is in the heartland, or something like that.

Balloon or no Ballon, Refinancing your House might be worth it

Author: Dave Halliwill

I just finished refinnancing my house and it turned out quite well. The main reason that I did it was that I was on a 7 year ballloon that was coming up next year. For those of you that are as lacking in knowledge of mortgages and financing as myself that basically means that I took a lower interest rate but agreed that the rate could change after 7 years. So I wanted to redo the loan so I wouldn't be surprised by any shocking new interest rate next year.

In any event I found out that refinancing produced quite a few benefits for me and was probably worth doing at this point even if I hadn't felt the need to because of the balloon:

- It slightly lowered my monthly payment
- I get to skip a payment for the month of April
- It reduced the length of my remaining loan from 24 to 20 years
- I received an extra $1,500 or so back in the mail

Now in my case my banker said that part of the problem was that my taxes had been increased significantly, forcing the escrow to get a little messy, and that was costing me money. Additionally, I had others tell me it was because my "new loan" was for less money, but it was for the same amount of money that my old loan left off on, and I was paying a higher percentage amount on the principal for the old loan, so I'm still having a hard time swallowing that one.

Whatever the reasons, when you consider that the refinance charges were significant, it seems amazing to me that I could add to my debt but still come away in better shape.

The real shocker is that the interest went up, from 4.75% to over 5%, so the next time your shoping for loans and the focus has an over emphasis on the interest rate, be sure to check the monthly payment amount and the number of payments. Those are the numbers that hit your pocketbook in the end.

Housing Now as cheap as Renting according to some numbers

Author: Dave Halliwill

I heard someone talking the other day about numbers he's been tracking for quite a while on the cost of owning a home versus the cost of renting. He said that for the first time his numbers were showing the cost of owning a house going down enough to be comparable to the cost of renting. So for those of you who've saved a nest egg and are looking to go from renting to buying, now might be a great time to do it. Sellers have started to acknowledge the drop in market values and listing prices have come down as a result.

Adding Craigslist RSS Feeds to your site can be a good promotion

Author: Dave Halliwill

I've been carrying Craigslist RSS feeds on a clients Real Estate website for quite a while, and after sticking with these somewhat secondary pages on the site, I have to say that the effort has born some fruit.

If your not familiar with RSS, its an XML based file format that a sending and receiving party to share data easily. It's tag based, like html, but the main intention of XML and RSS is to transfer the content, with less emphasis on how it should be displayed (there are techniques to specify preferred display now with XML, but we'll leave that for another day).

To display others RSS feeds on your website, you need:
- A dynamic website with some language that can be run on yor webserver. I use PHP.
- An XML parse module (or you could write your own from scratch but it's not necessary)

The way it works is that, when someone hits a page on my site that contains an RSS feed, my website server dynamically goes and hits the RSS feed address of the other site, such as Craigslist, pulls the data back realtime, and parses it for display in html on my page. Keep in mind though that what your retriveing is not html and not ready for immediate display. You have to read the records and output them in html, just as any other dynamic webpage works.

RSS is a boiled down XML specification, and typically includes a list of "News stories" or items. Each item consists of title, description, author, date, and a link to the full article on the originators site (Yes there's something in it for them too).

Here's some stats from my clients site to show you how including craigslist pages have helped with traffic:

Top Entry pages for February 2008(Webalizer)
1 2779 4.58% 1374 27.90% /
2 178 0.29% 127 2.58% /listings/314.html
3 138 0.23% 107 2.17% /craigslistannarbor.html
4 140 0.23% 99 2.01% /craigslistdetroit.html
5 256 0.42% 83 1.69% /listings/lakeproperties.html
6 175 0.29% 76 1.54% /adminsect/rsr-links.html
7 139 0.23% 75 1.52% /listings/311.html
8 165 0.27% 73 1.48% /listings/vacant.html
9 161 0.27% 62 1.26% /lakesomerset.html
10 68 0.11% 57 1.16% /listings/139.html


Top Search Queries(Google Webmaster Tools)
1 27% remerica 9
2 16% michigan real estate listings 8
3 7% craigslist ann arbor mi 8
4 4% craigs list ann arbor mi 3
5 4% vacant land for sale in michigan 9
6 3% somerset michigan 9
7 3% remerica real estate 8
8 3% craigslist ann arbor michigan 9
9 3% craigslist for ann arbor mi 5
10 2% somerset mi 9
11 2% craigslist ann arbor 46


Top Content last 30 days (Google Analytics)
1. / 745 433 00:01:28 38.16% 32.35% $0.29
2. /listings/lakeproperties.html 351 181 00:00:57 35.00% 17.38% $0.17
3. /listings/vacant.html 205 125 00:00:43 52.50% 31.71% $0.08
4. /listings/residential.html 202 118 00:00:53 39.47% 23.27% $0.08
5. /listings/314.html 199 171 00:01:14 77.37% 65.33% $0.00
6. /index.php?framecontent=mls-drilldown-menu.php&county=Hillsdale 184 46 00:00:20 0.00% 1.63% $0.11
7. /southern-michigan-mls-county-index.html 182 87 00:00:20 10.00% 4.95% $0.23
8. /listings/311.html 157 122 00:00:55 66.67% 40.76% $0.00
9. /lakesomerset.html 150 113 00:01:11 41.18% 38.00% $0.13
10. /craigslistannarbor.html 143 120 00:04:36 83.90% 81.82% $0.00
11. /listings/223.html 137 82 00:00:58 20.00% 10.95% $0.00
12. /listings/all.html 130 67 00:01:02 27.27% 16.92% $0.07
13. /listings/326.html 121 80 00:00:32 50.00% 23.97% $0.12
14. /listings/319.html 119 61 00:00:42 39.47% 26.05% $0.08
15. /craigslistdetroit.html 118 98 00:04:21 82.47% 78.81% $0.10


To find the Page Address of RSS Feed for the Craigslist page you's like to add to your site and select your region (I think craigslist makes you select a region first). For me, that takes me to http://jxn.craigslist.org/
Then I select "Real Estate for Sale", and click on the Orange RSS Icon at the bottom right of the screen, as shown.




Don't worry about the format of the resulting page that you get; it may look strange because its rss/xml, not html. The important thing now is to grab the address from your browser bar. That's the address that any software you set up will need to refer to to pull the feed.

So the Craigslist's page for Jackson Michigan Commercial Listings is:
http://jxn.craigslist.org/off/

(Don't confuse that with the RSS feed address. To get that you would need to go to that page, scroll to the bottom, and click on the orange RSS link icon, as previously discussed).

You can see the result of subscribing to the feed by going to my clients site at
http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/craigslistjackson.html

When Real Estate Boards Make Different Rules For The Same MLS Website

Author: Dave Halliwill

A little while back, I was working on getting MLS Listings into an clients website, when I noticed one of the listings had the Realtors info in the description. I thought it was odd because I had been told that was against the rules. On checking with the Real Estate Board that they were a member of, the person first told me that wasn't allowed and they would have to check. After checking, however, they came back and said that the listing in question came from another adjacent county, and a from a member of another board, and that each Board had their own set of rules on how they could put their listings in. Now most folks that have been involved with Real Estate and the MLS systems know that people put listings in, and then share them on each others websites. Most sites, when displaying these listings, try very hard to downplay the listing brokers info and use the page as an add for themselves. This is the main reason that some Realtors engage in the practice of putting their info - name, phone, company - in the description o try to get some exposure for themselves on their own listing.

The issue that I have with this is that, now I display their listings, and they are allowed to prominently display their info in the description on my page, but when they display my listings on their page, I'm not allowed to put my info in the description, effectively allowing them to more easily hide or downplay me as the listing broker. And this is all on the same website. Am I missing something or does that seem like a bit of an inequitable arrangement? For my client, who sits on the border of 3 counties, its especially tough.

Now to be fair to their local Real Estate Board, I tend to agree with them in that I don't think that the agents' info should go in the description. But in the end all the boards sharing this MLS Website need to negotiate common rules that better disallow hiding the listing brokers information.

Using Google Maps on your Real Estate Site

Author: Dave Halliwill

I've done a bit of work on the Real Estate website that I support for a client, so I thought I'd discuss a few things I learned about using Google maps with listings in your website.

When I first set up the clients site, I set up a little logic to dynamically put a link to a Google map showing the location of the property on a map. So, based on the address fields in the database, I would print out something like:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=14700 Hilltop Drive, Somerset, MI 49281&spn=0.026496,0.043460&hl=en

Where the address is, obviously, 14700 Hilltop Drive, Somerset, MI 49281.

This gives a map that looks as follows when clicked on:



The problem with this though, is that Google just can't resolve some addresses. It's not really Googles fault, as pinpointing a location on a map based on a street address is prone to all kinds of problems. I'll give just one example of that.

My client lives in a rural area of Michigan. When post offices were first created in the area in the early part of the century, the locations were based on the towns that thrived around the railroad (believe it or not). A couple of these junctions were the towns of Cement City and Jerome. These towns, and Jerome in particular, are quite small. In the last 20 or 30 years, Lake communities have spring up at both Lake Somerset and Lake LeAnn whose populations are much larger. But mailing addresses for many around Lake Somerset are still Cement City to this day. Likewise, many homes around Lake LeAnn still have mailing addresses of Jerome, even though its several miles away.

Ok enough of the example. What's a better method than using mailing addresses to create a map? The best way is to use latitude and longitude and create a slightly different link, that would look as follows:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=42.05202,-84.385208&ie=UTF8&ll=42.05202,-84.385208&spn=0.06326,0.129089&z=15

The Google page that comes up when you click on the link looks like this:



While the accuracy is good you'll notice that the location on the map is labeled only by the latitude and longitude this time, which isn't as nice. I suspect that there's a way to correct that by adding other parameters to the url but I haven't had time to tinker with it. If your interested, you can find some Google Maps parameter info here.

In addition to the above described techniques, its also quite easy to embed static google maps on a website. Just use Google maps, and when you get the map you'd like to embed on your website, click the "link" link just above the map to the right, as shown below:



Then paste the resulting code into your website in the spot you want to use it. I did find though, that Google won't allow you to use that as a template and dynamically alter the parameters to show different maps. Your given an ID and its good for that one map.

To get really serious about utilizing Google maps in your Real Estate or other map related website, check out the Google Maps API. With this you can do quite a bit more than anything I've described above.

Protecting your website domain from squatters

Author: Dave Halliwill

I had a rude awakening a little while back with my folks website, remericasomersetrealty.com. I stumbled onto a similar site, remericasomerset, without the realty on it. It was obviously someone who had nothing to do with Remerica, or Somerset Michigan personally. The site is basically full of paid links to surprisingly legitimate sites. Whether or not they know where their advertising dollars are going (I assume the motive for the owners of the site to promote them is money coming from some where) is a mystery, though I would think not for some of them.

Some of the site I saw at a glance on the page included:

homegain.gom
realtor.com
mollymaid.com
dice.com

Pretty surprising to me, and I wish I knew what more to do about it.
Here's the info on the site owner. West Indies! Surprise Surprise.

Registrant:
Keyword Marketing, Inc. (REMERICASOMERSET-COM-DOM)
P.O. Box 556
Main Street
Charlestown, West Indies
KN
+852.30164984
+852.30164984
message@keywordmarketinginc.com

Domain Name: REMERICASOMERSET.COM
Status: PROTECTED

Administrative Contact:
Keyword Marketing, Inc. message@keywordmarketinginc.com
P.O. Box 556
Main Street
Charlestown, West Indies
KN
+852.30164984
Fax- +852.30164984

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Keyword Marketing, Inc. message@keywordmarketinginc.com
P.O. Box 556
Main Street
Charlestown, West Indies
KN
+852.30164984
Fax- +852.30164984

Record last updated on 03-Jun-2008.
Record expires on 02-Jul-2008.
Record created on 02-Jul-2007.

Domain servers in listed order:
Name Server: DNS1.DNSSERVER6.COM
Name Server: DNS2.DNSSERVER6.COM
Name Server: DNS3.DNSSERVER6.COM

Being Dropped from Google Really Hurts

Author: Dave Halliwill

Well, I've read alot about the horrors people have at being completely dropped from the Google index, and now I've experienced it first hand. The site is remericasomersetrealty.com, and doesn't even come up in the index at all when I search on "Remerica Somerset Realty". Previously it was number one (obviously). Google has always advertized that certain tactics are a no no and can get your site banned. Of course if someone hacks your site and is up to no good then the last thing they are worried about is keeping your site in good stead with google. Thats what happened to me. What they did was to plant an encryption that unpacked itself when executed, and displayed about 40 or 50 hyperlinks on the site. Only the hyperlinked text was non-existant (Nothing between the <a> and </a> tags). And they displayed it with a style tag attribute that basically said "nodisplay", so you can see in on the rendered page, but its in the source code. The idea is that these link get picked up byt the search engines and thier ranking goes up. I didn't catch it for a acouple of weeks and paid the price. I suspect, however, that if google is dropping my site for hosting the bad code, I doubt they are giving much love to the sites in the links either (though I did notice that THEY weren't dropped completely). I only wish that google wouldn't make the complete assumption that the code is the intentional work of the site owner. I have my site registered with google analytics and google webmaster tools. A simple email saying "your site may have an issue and you may want to check it" would be nice. Maybe they should update their algorythm to say "if (host == ipower) { bogus_code_source = "hacker"; }

Edgio Closing and CodeMash

Author: Dave Halliwill

I received an email from Edgio the other day that said that they were auctioning off their website. I'm not sure what it means but it could mean that they may not be around much longer. If so no more posting ads there.

On the technology side, the other thing I wanted to do was to plug the 2nd Annual CodeMash Down i Sandusky Ohio. They had a lot of great presentations last year, and it seemed like a fairly cutting edge affair to me. Pretty cool water park too. Here's my little plug for them:

CodeMash

Gauging the Housing Blues from Wall Street Journal Headlines

Author: Dave Halliwill

I get the Wall Street Journal and I enjoy reading it. It's a great newspaper. But lately I've been so busy, I haven't been reading it much. Al I have tiem for is to skim the headlines. Lately there have been more and more headlines about the Housing market and Mortgage Crisis. After reading these headlines daily for the last few months I feel like I know all about the Housing situation, or atl least where it's going. So I thought I'd share a few Wall Street Journal Headlines to make the point. Here are some recent ones and a few from earlier this spring. Skim them and you'll be up-to-date on all the latest housing and mortgage doom and gloom.

Data On Housing Suggest Bottom Hasn't Been Hit
Page A2
March 21, 2007

Finding a Mortgage in Tougher Times: Turmoil in Subprime Market Hits Home as Terms Tighten For Some Borrowers; Better Deals for the Prime Segment
Personal Journal
March 22, 2007

Regulators Scrutinized in Mortgage Meltdown: States Federal Agencies Clashed on Subprimes As Market Balloned
Front Page
March 22, 2007

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae pledged to buy tens of billions of dollars of new subprime mortgage loans over the mext few years to help prop up the market.
(What's News - Business and Finance)
Front Page
April 19, 2007

Debt On Sale: Banks Grease The Leveraged-Loan Machine
Money and Investing
October 10, 2007

Big Banks Push $100 Billion Plan To Avert Crunch
Front Page
October 13, 2007

Citigroup Model Is Left Shaken By Credit Crunch
Front Page
October 16, 2007

Burned by Real Estate, Some Just Walk Away
Personal Journal
October 18, 2007

Credit-Market Fears Flare Despite Upbeat Earnings
Money and Investing
October 18, 2007

Interest Rates Defy Fed's Recent Cuts: Credit-Market Crunch Keeps Yields Relatively High on Savings, While Home-Equity and Some Other Loans Remain Pricey
Personal Journal
November 6, 2007

Morgan Stanley May Take Hit From Subprime
Money and Investing
November 7, 2007

Dump this House: Unloading your Property in a Slow Market
Personal Journal
November 7, 2007

Get Set for Wave of Debt Downgrages: With Investors Frazzeled, Real Estate Softening, Three Rating Firms Have Their Markers Out
Money and Investing
November 9, 2007

Dividend-Cut Anxiety Rises as Banks Wobble
Money and Investing
November 10, 2007

Credit Pressure Filters Down To Muni Market: Bond Insurers' Exposure To Troubled Mortgages Ripples Through System
Money and Investing
November 16, 2007

If Homne History Repeats, Then Look Out
Money and Investing
November 20, 2007

Have Companies Feasted on Debt? Ask Smithfield
Money and Investing
November 21, 2007

Mortgage Mess Curtails Wagoner's Honeymoon
Marketplace
November 21, 2007

Mortgage Giant Fuels Worries With Steep Loss: Setback at Freddie Mac Is Worse Than Expected; Its Shares Plummet 29%
Front Page
November 21, 2007

Rising Rates to Worsen Subprime Mess
Front Page
November 24, 2007
For Banks, the Hurt Just Goes On: Options for Financing Drying Up in Europe; Short-Term Rates Jump
Money and Investing
November 26, 2007

Citigroup Feels Heat To Modify Mortgages: Nonprofit Groups Press For Subprime Relief; Deciding Who Gets Help
Front Page
November 26, 2007

Stocks Sink Into Correction As Credit Fears Take Toll
Front Page
November 27, 2007

HSBC Becomes First Bank to Bail Out Troubled SIVs
Money and Investing
November 27, 2007

Home prices dropped 4.5% in the third quarter from a year earlier, while consumer confidence waned in November (What's News - Business and Finance)
Front Page
November 28, 2007

Subprime Sword Claims Morgan Stanley's Cruz: Heir Apparent Joins List of Wall Street Casualties; Was Polarizing Style a Factor in Her Ouster?
Money and Investing
November 30, 2007

U.S., Banks Near A Plan to Freeze Subprime Rates
Front Page
November 30, 2007

Borrowers Tap Mortgages Of Last Resort
Personal Journal
December 5, 2007

How the Credit Crunch Turned Local
Money and Investing
December 6, 2007

Is Tech Bust A Blueprint For Builders
Money and Investing
December 6, 2007

How Subprime Loan Mess Hit Poor Immigrant Groups
Front Page
December 6, 2007

Battle Lines Form Over Mortgage Plan
Front Page
December 7, 2007

How Hot Land Sales Offset A Housing Glut in Phoenix
Marketplace
December 7, 2007

Countrywide isn't out of the woods yet. Since a credit crunch……
Money and Investing
December 7, 2007

U.S. Mortgage Crisis Rivals S&L Meltdown
Front Page
December 10, 2007

Did Authorities Miss a Chance To Ease Crunch? Sec, Spitzer Probed Bear CDO Pricing in '05, Before Backing Away
Money and Investing
December 10, 2007

UBS's Subprime Hit Deepens Credit Worries: Bank Gets $11.5 Billion From Singapore, Others; 'Unknowable' Bottom
Front Page
December 11, 2007

Fed Cuts Rates, Seeks New Ways To Thaw Credit
Front Page
December 12, 2007

How Accurate Is Subprime Forecaster? Critis Say Index Tracks A Too-Narrow Portion To Sway Write-Downs
Money and Investing
December 12, 2007

Why Borrowers May Not Benefit From Rate Cut
Personal Journal
December 12, 2007

Some Lending Pressures Ease, a Bit
Money and Investing
December 13, 2007

Central Banks Launch Effort to Free Up Credit: Fed Extends $40 Billion In Bid to Revive Lending; Europe, Canada Weigh In
Front Page
December 13, 2007

How Goldman Won Big On Mortgage Meltdown: A Team's Bearish Bets Netted Firm Billions; A Nudge From the CFO
Front Page
December 14, 2007

Posting Homes For Sale on Geebo

Author: Dave Halliwill

Well I checked out geebo.com and put in a listing there. Here's my experience with that. I wanted to look at the listing again before I wrote the post, but had a rough time finding it. On Geebo you log in, or otherwise validate, with a password (no id), but I didn't see anywhere I could log in to check my current listings, and I didn't see where any link was sent to me via email. So I had to scroll through everything posted for Detroit for three days, which boiled down to 20 or 30 screens.

Geebo doesn't let you put html in the description, but if you put in a web page address, Geebo will recognize it as a link and hyperlink it for display. However, even though they preserve the actual link, the link that is displayed is only the base url of the website. So, for example, to put the page address for listing number 149 in a Geebo ad, I type the following url: http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/149.html. When Geebo displays the ad, the link looks as follows: http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com
Notice that what you see is the front page address, but the actual link if you click on it is the link shown above; 149.html. I thought that was a little odd.

The other thing about Geebo was, when you surf through the listings, the info that is displayed in the lists doesn't include the title, so there's no good abbreiviated description of the listings. myhouseinfo.com has a similar weakness. Additionally, as with so many of these sites, Geebo is limited to major cities, so it doesn't cater well to rural areas. I did like the simplicity of the input screen. Geebo is not exclusive to Real Estate.

Posting Real Estate Listings on Oodle

Author: Dave Halliwill

I know I haven't written in a while and the summer (and half the fall for that matter) got away from me. I notice though that my .net guru buddy hasn't written all summer either though, so I feel better.

I said that I would check out some more Listing Posting sites a while back, so I checked out oodle this morning. Here's what I found. It looks like they have an affiliation with Lycos so you can post to both places, but as far as I could tell, it looks like you have to enter the posting in both places also. The software is similar but not identical. The main problem I saw with oodle was that, once I registered it assumed that I was the contact for the listing, and wanted to use my email as the addrss to reply to. Something craigslist allowed for along time ago was no reply address, and you specify the contact info in the classified. The nearest city I could post too was Detroit, which is at least 75 miles from my folks real estate area in Southern Michigan. Backpage still has this downfall also, but Craigslist has added Ann Arbor, and more recently Jackson, which is very close. Also oodle didn't allow me to specify a half bath, I didn't like having to select "real Estate" twice in the screen clicking process. It did let me specify a website address for the listing, but then it didn't hyperlink it for me. They could hyperlink it with a nofollow. I might post more to oodle in the future but it wouldn't be my first choice.

How do you add a hyperlink and other html to a craigslist listing ad

Author: Dave Halliwill

I have Google Analytics for a couple of my websites, and I finally added this reporting feature to my blog. For those of you that aren't familiar with Google Analytics, its a free service that allows you to view some amazingly diverse statistics for you website and all you have to do is put a small amount of javascript in your blog template or index file for your website. Anyway, as soon as I added this reporting capability I noticed that one search that brought someone to my blog was for "how to add hyperlink to craigslist ad". I thought that was interesting since I don't know that I had ever explained how to add a hyperlink, or any other html to a craigslist ad, even though I do this often. So here's a brief overview on how to add hyperlinks and other basic html to your craigslist.org post. These can also be applied to backpage.com. Some sites allow html and some don't so you'll have to experiment.

I always add my extra html markup to the description field. First, I'll explain the hyperlink, which I think is the most important since you can provide your own site with some nice inbound links this way.

here's an example of the syntax for a basic hyperlink for a listing:

<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/lakeproperties.html">
South Central Michigan Lake Homes and Properties
</a>

note that that actual web page is specified, but the text that will show up as hyperlinked on the rendered craigslist or backpage webpage is South Central Michigan Lake Homes and Properties

For more on the correct syntax for hyperlinks see http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp

Here are some more simple examples of html tags for basic formatting,

to display this - type this
--------------------------
This is bold - <span style="font-weight: bold;">This is bold</span>
italic - <span style="font-style: italic;">italic</i>
carriage return- <br>


Other examples of values of the style attribute for a span tag that you may want to read up on are:
color: blue;
font-size: medium;

Here's a larger example of what you can do.
It's some html that I inserted into a recent craigslist add. Note that some of these tags are deprecated, meaning that they may be obsolete in future versions of html, and you'll want to look into specifying them as style attribute values of span or div tags in the future. I'll leave that lesson out here for simplicity.

<b>
<font size="+1">
Remerica Somerset Realty
</font>
</b>
<br>
Somerset, MI 49281<br>
517-547-6525<br>
<img id="plain" src="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/rsr-email.bmp">
<br>

<table>
<tr bgcolor="#F0F5FF">
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/277.html" title="Click here for Details on 11125 Waldron Rd, Jerome, Michigan 49249">
<img src="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/images/listings/thmb_11125__Waldron_Rd-Jerome-MI-49249-437.jpg" width=150 alt="11125 Waldron Rd, Jerome, Michigan 49249" >
</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/277.html" title="Click here for Details on 11125 Waldron Rd, Jerome, Michigan 49249">
CRYSTAL LAKE, MI LAKEFRONT WITH LAKE LEANN, MI ACCESS</a><br><font size="-2">THIS DISTINCTIVE CUSTOM DESIGNED HOME OFFERS A MEDITERRANEAN CONTEMPORARY STYLE HOME COMPLETE WITH A GATED COURT YARD TO THE ENTRANCE AND A PORTICO DE.....</font></td>

<td align="right">$669,000</td>
<td align="right">5,566</td>
<td align="right">5.08</td>
<td>Hillsdale</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#FFF5F0">
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/230.html" title="Click here for Details on 10500 Somerset Rd, Somerset, Michigan 49281">
<img src="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/images/listings/thmb_10500_Somerset_Rd-Somerset -MI-49281-138.jpg" width=150 alt="10500 Somerset Rd, Somerset, Michigan 49281" >

</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/230.html" title="Click here for Details on 10500 Somerset Rd, Somerset, Michigan 49281">
LAKEFRONT HOME 50 MINUTES FROM ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN</a><br><font size="-2">THIS SPECTACULAR WATER FRONT HOME IS SECLUDED FROM THE ROAD BY A RIDGE OF PINE TREES AND HAS STUNNING VIEWS LOOKING OUT TO THE MAIN LAKE FROM A QUIET .....</font></td>
<td align="right">$288,000</td>
<td align="right">2,424</td>
<td align="right">0.19</td>
<td>Hillsdale</td>

</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#F0F5FF">
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/252.html" title="Click here for Details on 10650 Glendalough Ln, Somerset, Michigan 49281">
<img src="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/images/listings/thmb_10650_Glendalough-Somerset-MI-49281-259.jpg" width=150 alt="10650 Glendalough Ln, Somerset, Michigan 49281" >
</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/252.html" title="Click here for Details on 10650 Glendalough Ln, Somerset, Michigan 49281">
WATER FRONT HOME FOR SALE 50 MINUTES WEST OF ANN ARBOR, MI</a><br><font size="-2">EXCEPTIONAL 1.29 ACRE YARD WITH 62 FEET OF SANDY BEACH ON THE LAKE IN A QUIET BAY WITH MAIN LAKE VIEWS. MATURE AND TREE SHADED YARD WITH SCREENED GAZ.....</font></td>
<td align="right">$254,000</td>
<td align="right">2,080</td>

<td align="right">1.29</td>
<td>Hillsdale</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#FFF5F0">
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/241.html" title="Click here for Details on 10770 Arrowhead Circle, Jerome, Michigan 49249">
<img src="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/images/listings/thmb_10770_Arrowhead_Circle-Jerome-MI-49249-345.jpg" width=150 alt="10770 Arrowhead Circle, Jerome, Michigan 49249" >
</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/241.html" title="Click here for Details on 10770 Arrowhead Circle, Jerome, Michigan 49249">
WATER FRONT HOUSE FOR SALE IN SOMERSET CENTER, MICHIGAN</a><br><font size="-2">SPECTACULAR VIEWS. RANCH STYLE HOME WITH FULLY FINISHED WALKOUT AND FRONTAGE ON PRIVATE ALL SPORTS SOUTH LAKE LEANN. DOCK YOUR BOAT AND ENJOY THE FA.....</font></td>

<td align="right">$199,000</td>
<td align="right">2,240</td>
<td align="right">0.26</td>
<td>Hillsdale</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#F0F5FF">
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/181.html" title="Click here for Details on 14175 Tralee Dr, Somerset, Michigan 49233">
<img src="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/images/listings/thmb_14175_Tralee_Dr-Somerset-MI-49233-153.jpg" width=150 alt="14175 Tralee Dr, Somerset, Michigan 49233" >

</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/181.html" title="Click here for Details on 14175 Tralee Dr, Somerset, Michigan 49233">
LAKE ACCESS HOME NEAR PARK, 20 MINUTES SOUTH OF JACKSON</a><br><font size="-2">THIS SUPERB HOUSE IS BUILT INTO THE SIDE OF A SMALL HILL AND REACHES SKYWARD WITH A TWO STORY ENTRANCE AND FOYER. NEAR MAIN PARK AND HAS OUTSTANDING V.....</font></td>
<td align="right">$164,000</td>
<td align="right">2,003</td>
<td align="right">0.34</td>
<td>Hillsdale</td>

</tr>
</table>

The rendered ad then looks something like this:


Remerica Somerset Realty
Somerset, MI 49281
517-547-6525

	CRYSTAL LAKE, MI LAKEFRONT WITH LAKE LEANN, MI ACCESS THIS DISTINCTIVE CUSTOM DESIGNED HOME OFFERS A MEDITERRANEAN CONTEMPORARY STYLE HOME COMPLETE WITH A GATED COURT YARD TO THE ENTRANCE AND A PORTICO DE.....	$669,000	5,566	5.08	Hillsdale
	LAKEFRONT HOME 50 MINUTES FROM ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN THIS SPECTACULAR WATER FRONT HOME IS SECLUDED FROM THE ROAD BY A RIDGE OF PINE TREES AND HAS STUNNING VIEWS LOOKING OUT TO THE MAIN LAKE FROM A QUIET .....	$288,000	2,424	0.19	Hillsdale
	WATER FRONT HOME FOR SALE 50 MINUTES WEST OF ANN ARBOR, MI EXCEPTIONAL 1.29 ACRE YARD WITH 62 FEET OF SANDY BEACH ON THE LAKE IN A QUIET BAY WITH MAIN LAKE VIEWS. MATURE AND TREE SHADED YARD WITH SCREENED GAZ.....	$254,000	2,080	1.29	Hillsdale
	WATER FRONT HOUSE FOR SALE IN SOMERSET CENTER, MICHIGAN SPECTACULAR VIEWS. RANCH STYLE HOME WITH FULLY FINISHED WALKOUT AND FRONTAGE ON PRIVATE ALL SPORTS SOUTH LAKE LEANN. DOCK YOUR BOAT AND ENJOY THE FA.....	$199,000	2,240	0.26	Hillsdale
	LAKE ACCESS HOME NEAR PARK, 20 MINUTES SOUTH OF JACKSON THIS SUPERB HOUSE IS BUILT INTO THE SIDE OF A SMALL HILL AND REACHES SKYWARD WITH A TWO STORY ENTRANCE AND FOYER. NEAR MAIN PARK AND HAS OUTSTANDING V.....	$164,000	2,003	0.34	Hillsdale

Click Here to see this ad in it's natural habitat, but keep in mind that the ad expires in 45 days.

How much do Search Engines remember old keywords and links?

Author: Dave Halliwill

This article isn't about Real Estate necessarily, as the ideas discussed can really apply to any web page, and optimizing it for search engines, but I'll use examples and lessons that I've learned from working on my folks Real Estate website to illustrate my theory.

When reading about Search Engine Optimization - methods for making web pages do better in search results - I've come across alot of comments that indicate that you should refresh, and otherwise update your content frequently. In response to this, I began to update the page titles for my folks listings on a regular basis, changing the keyword "house" to "home", "acres" to "acreage", and "lake front" to "water front" for example. Now I figured also that, since the search engines don't crawl and process at exactly the same time, that it might increase the odds of coming up in results for a wider variety of keywords. For example, if Yahoo crawls a listing when it says "Lakefront Home 30 Minutes South Of Jackson, MI", and then I change the title to "Water Front Property 60 Minutes West of Ann Arbor Michigan", and Google crawls the page, then between two search engines I've just associated the page for that listing with the following key words:

Lakefront
Home
South
Jackson, MI
Water
Property
West
Ann Arbor Michigan

Cache Keyword Smearing

Now have you ever noticed when you get search engine results in Google and you click on the cache instead of the actual website link, it shows you keywords on the page highlighted, but also words that don't even appear on the page, but rather are present in links that point to the page. Well that got me thinking that if Google is keeping track of keywords for that page that aren't even on the page, then aren't keywords that used to be on the page also data about the page that isn't on the page? In other words, just because I take the term "Real Estate" out of the title, possibly that history still helps Google weight the page - at least for a while - a little stronger for the term "Real Estate", even after the word is gone, especially when the page still says "Real Estate" in three other places.

Admittedly this "sticky history" idea is just a theory of mine, but as well as my folks humble website has done locally against many bigger players, it's one of my theories as to why. Since I haven't seen any reference to this idea out there yet, I'll call this Cache Keyword Smearing. I may be behind as I haven't had much time to read lately, so if anyone has read any other articles on it let me know.


Natural Link Smearing

Now if you like to learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) like I do, then your probably familiar with the term "Natural Link", which means that you put a hyperlink behind some text, but also typically the text of a paragraph, or some other larger stream of thought or communication. When you link that way, search engines - assuming everything is above board - tend to associate those keywords that are linked with the web page that they point to. So, if for example, I say I have one sponsor on one of my websites that has a really cool tool for helping people with arthritis open pill bottles , then the keywords tool, helping, people, arthritis, open, pill, and bottles all become associated with that site in any search engine that finds that inbound link.

Well back to Real Estate. I created an RSS feed for our listings, and this is what made me realize that I needed a "title" since title and article body tend to be two key fields in rss, and atom for that matter. For those people not familiar, rss and atom are two xml based standards for sharing data across the Internet. Anyway, I decided while I was at it that I might as well create two "titles" instead of one, since it wouldn't be much harder. Then I could use one title on the actual listing page, and in the page title, and use the other title for the rss feed. Now when most rss sites display an rss item, its typical (and courtesy) to hyperlink the title back to the actual page on the original site. So now I have some natural linked keywords out there on some rss feed sites with extra keywords that may or may not overlap the keywords in the page title. Finally, I go in to the listings every so often and swap the titles once in a while. I think of this as Natural Link Smearing.

What does a search engine do when title keywords and link leywords keep disappearing and reappearing? Would a search engine like Google actually remember the old title and link keywords and continue to weight your page on them to some extent, even after it's read the new keywords? What does it do when it sees these link and title keywords being swapped? Only the folks at Google know for sure, but with all the talk about the sand box - and the delayed effect getting stuff into Google, why would the logic work any different at getting stuff out?