Mike Andruff

This blog is about costly mistakes that the buying public make when purchasing real estate. The following video emphasizes the benefit of working with a professional realtor.

     At VancouverPropertyFinder.com, the best properties are at your fingertips. You can browse property listings, do a Google hybrid map search, or perform a customized search to find properties for sale that best meet your needs.           

     And please remember, Vancouver is host to 2010 Winter Olympics . We encourage the world to enjoy our wonderful city.

Most of us have heard about blogging, have been told to blog, and think its important but don't really know how important it may be. I run a website called www.VancouverPropertyFinder.com I use Active Rain to blog. My idea is to drive traffic from my blog to my website. (I also forward my blogs to Twitter and Facebook - Facebook Application - Simplaris Blogcast). So with all this effort, I need proof that "the game is worth the candle".

I have the proof!

For those of you with a website, you must have some means of monitoring your site's traffic. I use Statcounter.com

This tool offers a variety of reports but I chose the one that showed First Time Visitors by date. With this data, one can next correlate the data to the date of blogs recorded in Active Rain Statistics page:

In my experience, every time I blogged ( sample interval was 11 blogs in 31 days), my site traffic increased, on average, 75% more after each blog. If one recognizes that inertia for a site grows with time, these numbers are more than encouaging!

Speacial thank you to Joe Manausa - Tallahassee Real Estate for techniques on saving screen shots using Screen Hunter.

At VancouverPropertyFinder.com, the best properties are at your fingertips. You can browse property listings, do a Google hybrid map search.

And please remember, Vancouver is host to 2010 Winter Olympics . We encourage the world to enjoy our wonderful city.

Are you like me? Do you see the future of blogging as doing videos? Well I thought to spend a minute or two explaining my experience in shooting, editing, uploading and promoting my video.

Shooting

Recognizing videos have to be short to retain interest, think in terms of two to three minutes. Even still mine ran around three and a half minutes and it was hard to keep it short. While I am still learning how to use my Flip (the one button is a bit tricky to utilize), I shot 6 segments but used only three. Remember, your message should have an introduction, message, and ending. The messages are not only verbal but most importantly visual. Keep this in mind in sending multiple messages to your public.

Editing

I really got bogged down here. First, I needed to download the video files to my tablet (the Flip has a USB jack which makes it simple - no cables). Next, I had to use my Windows Movie Maker to edit. Just finding the video files was a task. The time line function allowed me to cut unwanted bits and pieces. This exercise took time to learn technique. I added title pages (visual learners take note), A banner through the first screen, and credits at the end. I thought of music but being time crunched, I passed on music this time. Another key step which I didn't do was to save the movie file. If you don't do this, you can't find the movie to upload it. Here is what my rough cut first version looked like:

Promoting

I'm a green horn here. I set up a TubeMogul.com account. This in terms allows you to populate other sites in one step (if you have accounts established first). Next, I came to Active Ran to tell my story. This has taken about three hours start to finish which in my view is three times more effort that written blogging. Of course, I expect economies of scale and future efficiencies from practice.

Summary

I have noticed many bright Active Rain members using video extensively. If nothing else, my appreciation for their expertise has gone up significantly. Video is impactful, entertaining and informative. I look forward to making more videos in 2009.

As a real estate professional watching my market continuously, I was shocked this week at a transaction I obvserved. The subject property, a 50'x130' lot with 2 kitchens in a 2,100 s.f. living area, was listed in May '08 for $1,568,000 and sold January 1st for $915,000! This is 70% of its assessed value, and $653,000 under its original list price. With seller motivation like this, and interest rates below 5% (remember this is Vancouver, Canada), doesn't it appear to be a good time to buy?

To follow this market with me, see VancouverPropertyFinder.com