About Baltimore's Baltimore City

It is not a secret, but many people don't know that HUD has a great program call Good Neighbot Next Door, GNND. This program allows Teachers, Police Officers, Fire Fighters and EMTs to purchase selected homes for half price.

I used to be a teacher before I got into real estate and I purchase my house at half price and I still have good equity in it. I help other teachers in my school and that is how I changed careers. I built my real estate business helping teacher, police officers and fire fighters purchase HUD homes at half price.

Some houses are in livable condition or need minor repairs, some need complete renovations, but either way they are very good deals. Some lenders have special financing program for GNND and some municipalities have grants for down payments or closing cost for their employees when they purchase a new home.

The way the program works the selected homes go into a 10 day bidding period, you have to bid the asking price and the winning bid get the house at half of the asking price. The key things are like every HUD home buyer has 48 hours to submit offer to HUD after notice of bid acceptance. Also buyers must use a real estate agent, and HUD doesn't pay for tranfer fees or real estate commission, the buyer has to pay for both. But still it is a good deal.

Visit www.hudhomestore.com for the available properties. And if you have furthers questions you can contact me at reobaltimore@gmail.com

Wordless Wednesday. Day 18 of May 31 Blog Challenge. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Well all I can think of when I see this picture is a elephant in a circus. I was taking a walk in Baltimore MD when I spotted this in front of somebody's house. Since photography is one of my new hobbies now,I decided to take a picture of this and use it as one of my Wordless Wednesday blogs.

So what exactly is a QR Code and what do they do?

QR Codes are Quick Response Codes. They have been around since 1997 and are an ever-expanding technology. They are an everyday part of life in Japan with uses that range from allowing easy access to a wealth of product information to allowing users to make appointments. The opportunities are limitless! QR Codes store and digitally represent mass amounts of data that can only be accessed by using a cell phone to scan the code. This technology has become so big that Internet giant Google now endorses them!

QR Codes in the U.S.

QR Codes are a technology that is increasingly being found all over the United States. As more companies are realizing the marketing and advertising power of the QR Codes, they are beginning to utilize this technology to become more accessible to potential customers. Honestly though, most QR Codes that people come across are very bland; black and white with simple 2D images. Simply put, they are ugly and are not distinguishable to the naked eye.

Custom QR Codes

Fortunately, you no longer have to settle for the plain QR Code produced by QR Code generators. You can now fully customize, add color, and even embed images to your QR Code and harness its full potential. A custom QR Code is an eye catching marketing tool that is an essential part to the success of your marketing campaigns.

Do you want to harness the power of a custom QR code?

If so, you’ve found the right place! With our custom QR Code service, you customize every aspect of your QR Code. You determine the QR Code’s color, any images or logos that you want to integrate within the code, and essentially put your stamp on the code. Your QR Code will catch the eye of endless mobile users who will be attracted to the image and scan it!

We have the best QR Code designers around!

We have a team of highly qualified professionals that take pride in designing your customized QR Codes to your every specification. Your QR Codes will be visually appealing, tested on multiple mobile platforms, and fully functional. Our average time for delivery is between 5-7 business days. Upon completion you will receive a PDF file with your customized graphic.

So what comes with our custom QR Codes?

• A fully functional, customized QR Code with your logo or image embedded.
• A mobile landing page for your text or other information you want accessed by mobile users.
• The ability to redirect to a URL, email address, or phone numbers.
• Unlike most other QR Code providers, our codes can be edited by simply sending us an email. So if you want to provide a coupon Monday and want your customers forwarded to a new page on your blog on Wednesday, send us an email and immediately have the changes made.
• We give you the flexibility to make the changes you want!

Interested? Please scan the code above!

Agents, Brokers & Realtors© are you thinking about setting up a Wordpress based Real Estate Marketing Website? A site that will allow you to show your property listings as well as offer IDX/MLS functionality? Not to mention be appealing to the end user, easy to navigate and present your services in the best light possible? Well you can thank us for bringing you "ESTATE" by WOO Themes!

Every professional who has researched or put together such a site knows that pricing does not come cheap ... upwards of $4500 (starting).  Before "ESTATE" came along you would have had to piece mail each component ... wordpress + theme + idx/mls integration + design + development = WOW!

And now the GAME CHANGER ... yes this is the NO BRAINER that Agents, Brokers and Realtors© have longed for! You get a solid content management system (CMS) in wordpress, a best of the best framework in WOO and now a theme that takes into account what your end users (homeowners) want to see most ... property listings (see 2008 Yahoo Real Estate Report)!

How Does it Work?

Working in conjunction with dsIDXpress, WOO Themes ("ESTATE") have integrated the functionality (code) needed by way of a plugin that imports your approved IDX/MLS Board property listings. You also have the option to upload single properties as well.

You will need the following to launch your Real Estate Marketing Website:

• Domain Name (URL) | Godaddy.com
• Wordpress (Self Hosted Version)
• Hosting (Simplehelix or WP Engine) Optimal Wordpress Hosting Providers
• Premium Wordpress Theme by WOO Themes - ESTATE
• IDX/MLS Plugin by dsIDXpress
• Expert Developers familiar with Wordpress, WOO Themes, IDX/MLS integration - Realty Press

You establish your Domain Name (URL) => Sign Up for Hosting => Install & Setup Wordpress => Install & Setup WOO Themes Framework => Install & Setup dsIDXpress Plugin => Add your content and listings => Attract Potential Clients => Close More Deals!

We did simplify it a bit above but that is pretty much what your going to do.

What About SEO?

They were especially diligent in considering Search Engines. The WOO Themes framework is notorious for its advanced SEO capabilities and when combined with your pretty hyper-local permalink (i.e. www.realtypress.us/123-smith-lane-southampton-new-york-11968) you get the best SEO friendly Real Estate Website possible!

Detailed Property Search and/or MLS Listings Search via Tab Option, For Sale/Rent, Location, Type, Price including advanced options

Featured Property Slider with "Call To Action" button and links to maximize exposure for high-end listings.

MLS Listings that can be shared to Social Networks (Twitter, Facebook, Dwellicious, Google Buzz & Email), Schedule Showing, Request More info, Printer Friendly, Automatic rotating thumbnail images and detailed MLS Property Info.

Really Cool Sidebar Features: Google Maps shows listing location bubbles w/image and short info of selected location (top thumbnail in screen shot below), Accordion style tabs for popular, latest, comments and tag posts.

Large "Calls To Action" Button with Agent "Contact" Pop Out (when clicked), Google Maps, image thumbnails that enlarge into larger box when clicked.

DEMO | PURCHASE

In their words: ESTATE is one of our most powerful themes to date and has also become one of the fastest selling themes since release

• Improved RSS feeds to show all property-specific data, and not just the generic WP RSS feed items;
• Property image gallery captions in thickbox / lightbox view;
• Further improvements to the search logic, as well as a property-specific search widget styled to fit Estate;
• Customization all labels in the Search and Single Property pages;
• Contact Agent about a specific property using the contact form template;
• Option to make Additional Features click through to their taxonomy archive page; and
• Back-end options to change Agent-related titles & copy in addition to the iconography for property features.

The conversation about Wordpress and what it can do has shifted to how best to optimize it. Now the question becomes what framework should you develop your site around. If your confused let us shed some light.

Wordpress is the underlying "code/framework" that powers your site (think of it as the frame of a car).  As such you should have chosen a control or optimizing "framework" (think of it as the engine). The "Engine/framework" is what we are covering here today ... the steroid induced design and development code needed to make your website truly outstanding.

This space is currently dominated by either Thesis or Genesis.  Well make room for Platform Pro by Pagelines.  Though they are new to frameworks they are not new to themes and are definitely worth the mention and write up.

To truly understand the power of Platform Pro check out the video (below) and better yet download a copy today!

In their words: Full Article (Pagelines) Before Platform you were left with three choices when building a site: custom-coding, wysiwyg editors, and themes. These all have their problems:

• Coding – Very technical in nature, and hard to maintain.
• Wysiwyg – Need to be built & designed primarily by the user. This costs time and often sacrifices code quality and design.
• Themes – Often require custom code and knowledge of WordPress to customize.

Platform was engineered to solve these problems by combining the best aspects of all three. It is as plug-and-play as a theme, as easy to customize as a wysiwig interface, and extremely extendable so custom code can be added in seconds.

1. Plug-and-Play Sections are pre-designed pieces of web design, which can be very complex (e.g. a feature slider, navigation, carousel, etc..). All the code remains contained and managed by the section API; so all you ever see is a simple drag and drop interface and options.
2. Control Sections can be toggled on or off on a page-by-page basis and add their own post-types and options. This means total control of every page on your site.
3. Performance Sections load their code (for example, Javascript), only on pages where they are used and according to best-practices. This greatly improves performance.
4. Development Can be created and modified by designers in the Base child theme. This means designers can add or alter the drag & drop sections in seconds.
5. Simple Sections add standard html markup and custom hooks (for extending functionality). This cuts down on a lot of code while giving you more functionality at the same time.