Alan May, Coldwell Banker Realtor® Evanston, Illinois Homes for Sale

In today's marketplace, when selling a home... the internet is the place to be. We know that almost every buyer begins his/her search on the internet, so that's the place we need to be.

In comparing our local Evanston marketplace, with the other real estate agencies... Who is getting the most eyeballs... the most unique views of your listings??

I used a site called "compete.com" to check the unique views of companies in our area. Compete.com is an independent website that has no relationship with coldwell banker or any other real estate agency. You can use it to check the traffic of any website.

Here is Jameson/Southeby's (formerly Prairie Shores)... they only get 3,004 unique visitors to view your properties in the same sampling sampling period (I think it's a month).

Our newest competition... @properties, has 12,817 unique visitors. Better... but still no cigar.

Koenig & Strey, another local firm, with only 5,348 unique views on their site.

And there's Baird & Warner, a very popular local company, with a better result (they actually have a terrific website, that consumers really like).. 40,527 unique views...

And here's our local site... coldwellbankeronline.com. As you can see, we're crushing it, with 115,873 unique visitors to view your home on our site! Almost triple our nearest competition... and almost double of all of the above combined.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, why is it that so many more people are viewing out local site (after all, it's very similar to theirs... it's a local site, with only local listings.. why is it that so many more people are choosing to view our site, over others?

Well, it probably comes down to the fact that we don't require viewers to "sign in" and give us their e-mail address and other information. We're more interested in allowing people to view your property, than we are with collecting potential leads from email addresses of people who really don't want to be contacted yet.

So, if we know that the buyer beings his search on the internet... why wouldn't you want to list with the company that gets your property viewed by the most people??

And now... if I really want to play unfair:

Here's our national site... with over a Million views!! Now that's a lot of eyeballs! And if you want to know how that holds up to another national site, you might be interested to see this one:

Here's activerain.com with a very respectable 687,419 unique views. Very impressive!

btw... you wanna know why Realtor.com can charge us as much as they do, for advertising with them? How about THIS:

Now those are some impressive numbers... and notice that they're ranked as the 154th most visited site on the entire freakin' internet!! That's how they can get away with charging what they do. They bring a lot of eyeballs to the game

- 3

It's an ugly, rainy, snowy day here in greater Chicagoland.

It's cold, damp... even with the Snain (my own word... snow and rain), there are still a few inches of snow stubbornly adhering to the ground. And I've got an inspection scheduled for later in the day.

Snain, Snain, go away.

I'm not looking forward to walking the outside of the house, through the rain, the snow and the slush... but what a great day to make sure that the roof, and basement aren't leaking.

- 3

The news anchors at our local station, WGN-channel 9, have been together for years!

You may wonder what they do during those long commercial breaks. Well, as your source for everything inane, I'm here to answer that question. Here are anchors Robert Jordan, and Jackie Bange with a routine that has clearly developed over many years.

You can feel that they're very comfortable with each other, and in complete sync with one-another. Well, almost, complete sync. And yes, it's safe for viewing at the office.

I gave myself a holiday present this year, and drove (with my younger sister) to have lunch with my other younger sister in Indianapolis.

That's right... she lives in Columbus and we drove out from Chicago to meet her "bout" halfway.

Lunch was nothing fancy, just a triad of siblings sitting, laughing, eating (it wouldn't be a May event, without some eating), and a little driving our waitress at Applebee's (on 421 North) a little crazy, sitting way too long, laughing way too loud and overstaying our Applebee's welcome.

Along the way, we drove through a field of Wind Turbines which were impressive enough for me to drag out the i-phone, and see what I could learn about them.

And, yes, these photos were taken on my iphone, through the windshield of my sisters VW Bug (she was driving) going 70 miles per hour (or so)... so cut me some slack.

I learned that what we were passing through on Interstate 65 was called the Fowler wind farm and was part of three wind farms in the area, amounting to almost 900 of the turbines you see in the photo, spinning happily along with a mild breeze. They were an impressive site.

To give you some idea of their stature... the "stem" averages about 250 feet to the turbine itself and the propeller blades have a "wingspan" of 250-313 feet themselves.. (adding an impressive 125-156 feet in height to the already gigantic stems).

Fowler wind farms call themselves the largest wind farm in the U.S., perhaps the world, and have enough turbines to produce 600-800 MW of power. Just how much power is that, you may ask, and what does that mean to the real world?

Well, I'm glad you asked... Wikipedia says that 600-800 MW (which I believe is Mega Watts) of power is enough to power 200,000 average American Households! (I don't know if that's per day, or per year... it was very unclear...anyone who can answer that, I'll update this story).

It was almost as impressive driving back home at night, as each of these turbines has a little red blinking light atop it's turbine, and they all blink in unison... as far as they eye can see.

Blinky, Blinky, Blinky, blinky, blinky, blinky, blinky, blinky

... well you get the idea. Fun, huh?

Oh, and lunch was grand!

If you're fortunate enough to live in (or near) the wonderful city of Chicago, you have heard of, or visited the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Every year, around this time, they offer the public the opportunity to visit the zoo at night, when it's lit for the holiday season.

The animals demand (and deserve) a little holiday festivity, just like the rest of us, and they seem to enjoy the colours and the crowds who come to ooh and ahh over them (and the lights).

So we took that opportunity last night to walk the zoo and freeze our gonads off enjoy the lights.  I apologize for the crappy quality of the photos, but those damn point-and-shoot digital cameras have a tough time with night lights.

Hey, whatcha gonna do?

After we'd walked about 43 miles through the frozen tundra.... (allright, allright, it wasn't that far, and it wasn't really that cold)... only to find most of the animals either invisible, sleeping or disinterested, we decided to warm up by walking practically across the street to one of Chicago's more famous restaurants (R.J. Grunts), where the salad bar was first introduced to the public in 1971. 

That's right, the salad bar was invented right here in Chicago, according to "Mr. Grunt", due to his laziness, and getting tired of people complaining about his salad-making skills, so he said "Hey, let's put the refrigerator in the middle of the restaurant and let people make their own salads!"  And the rest, as they say, is history.

It was warming, and good, and there wasn't a "healthy" thing on my plate!  And that's just the way I like it!

Happy Holidays, y'all!