The book, the group and Christmas… Realtor Keith Marshall’s week in review

rules about real estate

rules about real estateWriting the 365 Rules of Real Estate has been keeping me pretty busy. I finished the first draft a few days ago at about 900 rules in total, certainly enough for one book probably two and maybe even three by the time I’m through. I’m into the editing phase now, going a little slower than it should. That’s because I dictated the first draft and although dictation software is not too bad, it is nowhere near as good as typing for accuracy. The first draft took me exactly three weeks, which is pretty speedy considering it contains over 65,000 words, cobbled together over 187 pages. I’m rewriting now. I’m up to page 18. Alasdair has agreed to do the proofreading for me. I’m optimistic that as long as we take enough time the book will be error free.

I’ve been offering free copies at the bottom of my 365 Things to do in Kitchener Waterloo posts. I’m just asking people to e-mail me and request a Free copy. The books I’ve read and the podcasts I’ve listened to all said that this is a great opportunity to build a mailing list and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I hate spam. I should mention that here. I would never spam my audience.

On Linked In, I asked members of our 365 Business Network Group to send me their email addresses. I was surprised that such a high percentage responded. That’s good. It shows trust. The reason I asked for email addresses by the way is because we are making some changes to the group next year and those include changing our communication style as well as trying out different locations and times. We will also be having a guest speaker every month.

We got our Christmas cards out this week to our clients both past, present and future. I always like to get my Christmas cards out early. Not many people get many Christmas cards anymore I know, but I like being first. Being first is memorable. Just think, who was the second man on the moon? Who was the second Prime Minister of Canada?

I got my first Christmas card yesterday. Thanks Mayor Todd Cowan.

Earlier this year, our Prudential real estate office became Royal LePage. I have to say that although I was very happy at Prudential, I’ve noticed that Royal LePage is a much better organization. Yesterday I went to a workshop about content marketing. It was very good and well run. I learned a bit. And I disagreed with some of it too. The trainer said we should only spend 5 to 8 minutes a day on social media. He said that twitter is only about posting links to your blog and watching for links that interest you. As you know, I probably spend 10 times if not 50 times more eight minutes on social media per day and I don’t think twitter is all about posting links. I think its about starting conversations.

We have a new bridge opening over the Grand River today. This is big news. This will have a major impact on this part of Kitchener – Cambridge. There is a major development going in over there. 600 homes? Seems a little too close to the airport for me.

In local real estate news, The Kitchener Waterloo Association of Realtors reported that November was another good month for real estate locally. Actually all the Realtors on twitter are tweeting about this. It was a veritable cacophony from the menagerie, probably because the real estate news out of Vancouver and Toronto isn’t so good. It looks like their markets have finally hit the skids the condo bubble might have popped. This shows again that real estate is local and what happens in far off cities has very little impact on what happens in Waterloo Region. Having said that, there are two things I’d like to mention:

Number one: someone told me a few years ago that whatever happens in Toronto happens in Kitchener Waterloo a couple of years later. There is an impact but there’s a two-year lag for the impact to cascade from the epicenter of Toronto down the 401 to KW.

The second thing is whatever’s going to happen in the real estate market is going to happen to condos first. Condominiums are the leading edge, the bleeding edge of real estate forecasting. They’re easier to buy and sell and they are generally cheaper. They tend to be a good indication of what was happening in the residential homes real estate market.

We’re not doing any open houses this weekend. Last weekend was kind of quiet. I did open houses on both Saturday and Sunday at 229 Pastern Trail. In total, I only had three visitors but they were all actually quite good. In the spring time you get quantity over quality.

It only takes one.

On our community site, 365 Things to do in Kitchener Waterloo we’ve been gaining popularity steadily all year. I admit, a part of my morning routine is to check the number of unique visitors from the day before. We’re getting about 2 1/2 times as many visitors compared to the same month a year ago. 365KW is certainly working, reaching people. I think introducing “date night” was a great idea but so too was talking about food every Monday and introducing a guest blogger to add a new voice to our site.

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