Kim Wolfe

See why he chose North Village Townhomes near Atlanta and why they are a must see! Below is an excerpt of a story posted on ajc.com, "Long journey leads to the perfect place. " (By Marcia Killingsworth, For the AJC, Sunday, January 25, 2009)

"No. 3. Once Stevens saw the development, he knew "this was where I wanted to be." He was willing to wait for a new phase so he could have an end unit. Bracewell knew the developer and was able to assure Stevens of the townhome's quality."

To read the full story by AJC, please click here.

North Village | 1071 North Village Drive | Decatur, GA 30032
404-508-8855 | http://www.northvillagedecatur.com/

Cyrus Creek townhomes is hosting a free home buyers seminar on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 7pm, in Kennesaw, Georgia. This seminar is open to the public! Come learn about the current real estate trends, current mortgage options available to you and have your questions answered by professionals in the industry. Not only will you become knowledgeable as a home buyer, you will also see why Cyrus Creek has the best value new townhomes in Kennesaw, Georgia.

If you or someone you know would benefit from this seminar, call or email to RSVP today!

RSVP to Carol Stromatt
770-374-9123
wstro1945@aol.com

Cyrus Creek
3901 Cyrus Crest Circle
Kennesaw, GA 30152

Let's face it folks! Photos are so important no matter what industry you are targeting. Just look at myspace.com which gives you tons of free space to upload photos, create multiple galleries and practically unlimited slideshows from all your photos. And the best part is myspace provides a user friendly interface to simply upload, organize, and display your photos in albums and slideshows. So what do you do when you're creating your own website and you're not sure how to incorporate a gallery?

Well, I'll just give an example of what I did. I, on behalf of our marketing company, recently created a website for Parkway Villages. Parkway Villages offers single family homes located in the College Park area of Atlanta, Georgia. I will totally admit that I have recently learned website design and am new to the process of building them. I had personally gone to the community to take photos of the community and each of the models. So I had all of these great photos and I wasn't sure how to display them within the site. I thought it would be neat to have an official photo gallery in the site but we didn't really charge for a flash presentation. So after some thought, I started with the header images on each page. I merged 2 photos, 1 exterior and 1 interior photo, in photoshop and used different images for each page. I also used a 2 column layout on most of my pages (not on the features page) which allowed me to put photos on the left and copy and other stuff to the right of the page. You'll notice that each page has different photos in it. I think it provides a simple way of showing off the community along with making it a simple solution to my creative problem. Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think. Parkway Villages!

Today, I just googled some terms such as "photo galleries" and "slideshows". I'm sure with some further research, I could find ways to incorporate pictures using a free gallery or slideshow program. I'm interested to know your suggestion if you have any ideas.

How are you able to market you in this current economic state? How are you able to spend money on your listings when you may not be making any money? How are you to keep putting your feet in a forward motion when the media and publicity is constantly negative?

"You Be Creative!" Yes, I know this may sound a little corney but it's a simple statement that clearly says what we need to do. We all know that we have to do be doing something different than what we did yesterday if we are to be in the real estate industry tomorrow. Otherwise, how is that we are going to survive the constant negative wrath of the media and the obivious decline of sales due to stricter regulations on loans. We all have a choice to choose to be creative and postive during these times. Most of us have chosen to be in the real estate industry and we have to choose to stay in the industry when times are tougher than they have been in the past. We also have to choose to continue moving forward with an attitude that the industry will turnaround as it always has. I believe what scares us the most is that we don't really know how far down the decline will go before it starts going back up. So if you choose to be in the real estate industry, then you must choose to keep moving forward. After all, the most successful people in this world are usually where they are because they didn't give up!

As far as marketing yourself in this economy and spending money when no money may be coming in, their are many free ways to do this. Most of the ways I know involve the internet. And sure, you usually are required to sign up or open an account in some form or fashion in order to get the free part. But I say it's well worth the exchange of your information for a free tool or place to display your listing and/or your services reaching potential buyers that you may not have reached otherwise.

We all know or should know that the internet has fastly become the way to research and narrow down the home buying options. The internet has also become a way for anyone, whether a first time buyer or a fifth time buyer, to educate themselves more on the buying experience, the loan options and even the "do's" and "don'ts" of buying a home. It was just yesterday that I received a text message on my iPhone alerting me that i now had free access to thousands of hotspots nationwide, including Starbucks. So I can basically eat, sleep and sit on the toilet while having access to the internet. Just think. If I can do this, your buyer can to!

So are you interested in learning more? Then stay tuned fellow peers and marketeers! More information and opinions (mine :) are on the way!!