About Champaign County, IL

If you are looking for one of the best displays of Christmas Lights in Champaign County you will have to check out Candlestick Lane (aka Grant Place) in Urbana, IL

Dating back to 1963, Grant Place/Candlestick Lane has hosted an extremely decorated Christmas neighborhood. This tradition started when the Grant Place residents won a contest sponsored by Illinois Power Company and shared the $100 prize to buy candlestick ornaments for each home. The lighting ceremony was canceled last year (bah humbug!) due to lower participation but 5 new home owners on the street plan on participating this year so the event is back on.

I'm pretty excited to see the decorated homes this year and I know our 3 year old is looking forward to it too! In my mind I'm picturing Clark Griswold hanging from the gutters... The weather doesn't look too bad so I hope there is a nice turnout.

Location: View Candlestick Land Christmas Ceremony Map

I'll get a few pictures of the lights posted after this weekend.

Merry Christmas!

Mark Waldhoff

Keller Williams Realty

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In a recent listing appointment in Cherry Hills I discussed the local absorption rate with the home owners as a component of their overall pricing strategy. More details on that example and how the it is calculated can be found here: Home Update for Cherry Hills - Champaign, IL

In establishing the market value and recommended list price for a home I incorporate the following 3 components (at a miminum).

1. The Absorption Rate - What is the overall supply and demand of homes for this segment of the market?
2. What is the general range of $/sqft for sold homes? This is used as a 'reality check' but not as a true guideline. The goal here is to make sure that the house doesn't extremely stand out from the competition unless there is added value in the home.
3. Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) - The tried and true method of comparing a home to similar homes in similar or identical subdivisions that have sold in recent months.

Using these 3 components requires balancing the "sold" information with the active competition and pending sales. In a buyers market that is continually shifting a home seller needs to make sure they don't get caught looking in the past.

How is your home positioned in the market when you compare it to the competition? If there are 20 similar homes for sale will yours be one of the 5 to sell in the next 4 months?

www.ChampaignValues.com – Get a Free Estimate of Your Home's Value Instantly!

www.ChampaignExperts.com - Search Champaign County Real Estate Hassle Free!

Get Your Brokerage More Attention on Facebook

Have you ever thought that you would like a consolidated, professional looking, and easy to manage platform to get information out to your agents and clients other than a weekly e-newsletter? All of us have.

As the Strategic Social Networking Specialist for Area Pro Realty, I'm always on the hunt to make our Realty Franchise owner's lives easier. Having an online forum for news, updates, and other brokerage information is important for your agents and clients. Facebook Fan Pages are perfectly suited for this need, and you can create a cutting edge newsroom for your business. They're easy to use, free, have a high level of visibility, and can be assembled in just a few minutes. Here's how to do it:

• If you are logged into Facebook, scroll to the bottom of your screen.
• In the footer links, click the link called advertising.
• Click "+ Create Facebook Page".
• Fill out the forms and be descriptive.
• Proceed as prompted
• Next steps will be adding different applications to make the page more interesting and fun to use.
• To activate your page, you will need to "Publish" it. There will be a link to prompt you to do this.
• In the future, to manage it, a link called "Ads and Pages" will always be on the left.

Note: you will want to become the first fan of you page, it's not done automatically.

You can set your newsroom to be on autopilot by using some of these applications:

Facebook Notes - This is a default application on your Fan Page. To access it, click on the Notes tab at the top. Using the subscribe option, you can enter your brokerage's RSS feed. Now new note posts will show up automatically on your page.

Networked Blogs - This app will let you import your brokerage blog feed, as well as display links to other blogs, like this one, for instance.

Simplaris Blogcast - This is a way to import multiple blogs, so you can stream this blog in addition to your brokerage's.

Selective Twitter Status - You can either stream your entire Twitter feed, or use this, and your Fan Page will only post tweets with #fb at the end. This way you can select which posts go to your agents and which go to clients.

Involver for Pages - this is a host of applications that allows you to stream in your Twitter feed, RSS feeds, YouTube channel, and other features that will automate your brokerage's fan page.

As the Strategic Social Networking Specialist for Area Pro Realty, I provide our team of Real Estate Brokerage Franchise owners with the latest tools, technology, and ideas for making their business a success. We have Real Estate Franchises for Sale, and I'm happy to provide you with any information on how easy it can be to own the most innovative, supportive, and successful Real Estate Franchise in the world.

http://areaprorealty.com/franchise

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Five years ago after many years of being in real estate, I wanted to find a way to give back to the community that helped make me so successful. This year marks our 5th Annual Coat the Community Fundraiser. With the help of many sponsors including the Salvation Army, County Market grocery store, WCIA news and 92.5 The Chief radio station each year we gather to collect as many gently used coats as possible to donate back to our city of Champaign. The Salvation army is always there with their hot coffee and donuts helping us sort through the many coats and then with the distribution afterwords. In October 2008 we collected close to 1000 coats and we hope to surpass that amount this year.

Information for the 5th Annual Coat the Community:

Sponsored by Scott Bechtel & The Bechtel Group

Saturday, October 17th, 2009 * 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon

Location: County Market at Kirby Ave and Duncan Rd, Champaign

There are many people in this community that will appreciate your donation! Please save your extra coats and help keep a family warm this winter.

For anyone donating coats this October you also have a chance to win gift certificates from Buffalo Wild Wings, Monica's Pizza, and County Market grocery store.

I've really been wanting to get back into the shortsale game but was turned off by the entire process. The first 6 of these I did were a huge pain to say the least. I finally took some time and invested in a shortsale process that was essentially a fill in the blanks system. The difference in the process was immediately evident from the start. I got a much better response from the bank, my package moved through their system much quicker with fewer issues. I'm hoping to have a preliminary answer within 3 weeks of submission! I'll keep everyone posted as to the progress and outcome of the deal. If you're in need of selling your problem property follow this link and follow the instructions. www.stopforeclosurechampaign.com