Neil E. Broten

Hello:

I would like to begin a blog topic that discusses any and all of the problems that Realtors have run into when they are posting real estate listings online.

What sites do you find most troublesome?

How do you deal with the lack of current information on the internet; old listings, price changes, sites that refuse to delete your old listings, etc?

How does your use of precious time play into your online listing decisions?

Do you pay someone to put your listings up on a large number of sites?

What exactly stops you from listing online?

I think you get the picture.

Please, Please, Please join in on this topic and let's look at all of the problems of listing real estate online.

Thanks so much for your time. I wish you all the best in your real estate endeavors.

Best Regards,

Neil E. Broten

Please feel free to email me with any information that you would rather not post to this blog topic: neil@ubadoo.com

All of the below links come from Wikipedia - This is the page I got them from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources This is an awesome resource. Please check it out. Additionally, you can type 'public domain photos', 'public domain images' or 'public domain clip art', - into your favorite search engine (mine is Google - soon to control the world).

Additionally - and very importantly:

"The presence of a resource on this list does not guarantee that all or any of the images in it are in the public domain. You are still responsible for checking the copyright status of images before you" use them

I would just suggest that you make sure that the images you are using are public domain images.

I repeat (for extra emphasis): **Be SURE about the images you use - make certain they are public domain**

If you are unsure - do not use them.

I repeat (for extra emphasis):

Most of these websites make that pretty clear ***but if you are unsure - I would advise NOT to use it.***

I hope that this helps:

History

Historical images

• http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html Library of Congress American Memory site (Check copyright information for the separate items before deciding to use them!)
• http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/ - public domain images of American Political History
• http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ngillus.htm Images from The Newgate Calendar. Mostly crimes and criminals from the 18th century. Also other works at http://www.exclassics.com
• http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ Collection images scanned from various old books that are now in the public domain. Searchable. Used to be under http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
• http://www.john-leech-archive.org.uk/ John Leech sketch archives 1841 until 1864 from Punch magazine The page states they are long out of copyright and that they are believed to be public domain.
• http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/ Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library's online collection of digital images. Most will be {PD-art}. 90,000 images from rare books and manuscripts, search by keyword.
• http://digitalgallery.nypl.org New York Public Library. Over 500,000 images scanned from books. Including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more. There is a per-image usage fee even for public domain images.
• http://www.oldbookillustrations.com/ Images scanned from old books. States that images on the site are the works of artists who "...have been dead for over seventy years, which makes them part of the public domain in many countries". Searchable by keywords.
• America As It Was - a huge resource for vintage postcards in the U.S., organized by state. Any postcard first published in the U.S. before 1978 without an explicit copyright notice is PD. Lots of photos, aerial views, and maps of many U.S. locations.
• "The Secret Museum of Mankind" - collection of anthropological photographs published in a 1935 book without copyright. Scanned and released under a CC-NC license, but images should be public domain, at least in the US, since they are faithful reproductions of PD images. (Warning: strong 1930's racist P.O.V.)

Specific periods

• World War II Poster Collection over 300 posters issued by U.S. Federal agencies
• Photos of the Great War many images of World War I, scanned in from public domain resources. Slight usage notice, which is probably compatible with GFDL (requires attribution and link, as does GFDL, requests e-mail notice of usage).
• The Heritage of the Great War has several colour pictures from World War I (likely all PD, since the effort taken to scan/reproduce them probably fails to qualify for being a derivative work).
• World's Armed Forces Forum (gallery for images taken from the French Ministry of Culture's website) hosts more colour images of World War I (likely all PD, since the effort taken to scan/reproduce them probably fails to qualify for being a derivative work).
• http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/ Child Labor in America 1908 - 1912 by Lewis W. Hine
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Thousands of on-line, copyright free photographs of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Great Depression and the New Deal, and World War II.

Art

• http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/contents.asp - Images of the works of more than 2,600 realist painters many in the public domain, check catalogue for dates of works and artists.

Visual arts

Note: Accurate photographs of two-dimensional visual artworks lack expressive content and are automatically in the public domain once the painting's copyright has expired (which it has in the US if it was published before 1923). All other copyright notices can safely be ignored.

• http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/
• http://sunsite.dk/cgfa/

Music

• http://www.ibiblio.org/mutopia/

Old photographs, photographers and their subjects

• http://photo-sleuth.blogspot.com/ - Articles providing old photographs with sourced research as to their origins and history.

Books

• http://books.google.com - Scanned in books & historical documents. Keyword searchable. Great source for diagrams/illustrations. (not all public domain, many still in copyright)
• http://gutenberg.net - Scanned in books. Searchable.
• http://www.bookscanning.com - Scanning of public domain books without destroying them. Great source for non-destructible scanning. (This site provides scanning services of printed Public Domain Works. Customers pay a fee for an editable soft copy of the selected work.)

Logos and flags

• http://www.wpclipart.com/flags/index.html 436 flags, countries listed alphabetically, also US State flags, historical and others. All in PNG format.
• http://www.openclipart.org/
• https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html CIA World Factbook

Postage stamps

• Eureopeanstamps.net European countries postage stamp images database - editors must check PD stamp templates for which stamps are public domain and which might be acceptable as fair-use.
• Commons:Stamps/Public domain

http://www.theworkofgodschildren.org Collection of high-resolution Roman Catholic images of the Saints and the events in the history of Salvation. All pictures have been released into the public domain.

http://www.coolnotions.com/PDImages/pd_StoryOfTheBible.htm Collection of Public Domain pictures from the Bible.

General collections

• http://ushistoryimages.com/ - A growing collection of free images related to United States history.
• http://www.freephotos.lu/ Free public domain photos. For private and commercial use.
• RepublicDomain.com is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers.
• http://www.public-domain-photos.com - Thousands of high quality public domain photos
• Les photos gratuites de GratisNette thousands of free photos for private and non commercial use
• Public Domain Pictures - Free high quality public domain pictures for commercial and personal use - Sorted in categories, ability to search by keywords. Todays photographs, no old scanned pictures or low resolution images
• Copyright free, high-quality scans from pre-1920 books - Categorized and searchable. Click "free images" on the left navigation.
• Public Domain Photos - Free for commercial redistribution and alteration - Moka Gallery - All photo from this site is 100% free for use (old domain: moka.t2i.info) !
• Scans of art from pre-1922 books and various photos, free for any use
• Easy Stock Photos - Royalty free stock photos, pictures, images and information in the public domain - Collection of public domain photos organized by category in image galleries.
• http://karenswhimsy.com/public-domain-images/ - Scans of engravings and other artwork from a personal collection of old books, magazines, and post cards. Updated regularly.
• http://www.wpclipart.com - Public Domain clipart optimized for use in word processors. Browsable via site treeview and thumbnail pages. Complete collection also downloadable from ibiblio.
• http://www.gutenberg.net/catalog/ - Project Gutenberg: 12,000+ books, only a few illustrated, but the number of illustrated books increases from week to week. There are thousands of PD images available.
• http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/ - GIMP Archive: 32,000+ Royalty-free photos, organized by keyword.
• http://www.openclipart.org/ - This project is an archive of public domain clip art. The clip art is stored in the W3C scalable vector graphics (SVG) format.
• http://www.clker.com/ - Easy to search public domain images, directly usable in openoffice.org
• http://opendomain.blogspot.com/ - public domain images from various sources in one-a-day blog format.
• http://pdphoto.org/ - Large collection of mostly public domain photos. Read the license for each picture before use; also, model releases may not have been obtained for all photos.
• http://www.logodesignweb.com/stockphoto/ - Small but growing public domain stock photos released by photographer.
• http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/public/public_domain.htm - Scanned and colorised etchings claimed to be PD images.
• http://www.freephotos.se/ - Small personal photographic collection dedicated to the public domain.
• http://www.mathpuzzle.com/loyd/ Images of pages of a 1914 book of puzzles
• http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/sacredspiral/ - Public Domain Pagan Clipart
• http://content.lib.washington.edu/costumehistweb/index.html - This collection includes 417 fashion plates from 1806-1914 from some of the leading fashion journals of the time.
• http://publicdomain.photopress-spain.com/ - Public Domain Spain Photo Gallery. Photo archive containing a collection of free, public domain images and photos of Spain.
• http://www.PublicDomainFootage.com/ - Public domain archival stock footage and newsreels.
• http://www.vintagepixels.com/ - Large database of historical, high quality, free-for-use images. People can also share their archived photos.
• http://www.pdclipart.org - 25,000+ Public Domain Clip Art (great for printing). Categorized & searchable.
• Public Domain Image Gallery Hundreds of categorized photos free for public use. Images added frequently.
• Public Domain Depot A collection of public domain photos and resources with many original photos from the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
• Historical News A growing collection of historical newspaper articles. The focus is on forgotten history.

Computer-generated public domain images

• http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl US Census Bureau TIGER Mapping service
• http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/mapit/ - Automatic public domain map generating program
• http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cin/index-e.html - Canadian Illustrated News, 1869-1883

Public domain image meta-resources

• The Best Copyright-Free Photo Libraries -search for images on government sites
• http://www.unclesamsphotos.com a detailed directory of the US Government's public domain image galleries
• http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/links/clipart.html (a lengthy list of categorised links to other public domain image sources, many of those links don't work though)
• Clip Art/Public Domain at the Open Directory Project (a list of links to sites with public domain clip art)
• http://www.graphicsngraphicdesign.com/freestockphotos-graphicdesigners/
• http://images.google.com - this still requires one to check the copyright status of each image.

Uncategorized links

• http://content.cdlib.org/search?style=oac-img;sort=title;relation=ark:/13030/kt5b69q5bc - Oakland Public Library. Not all are PD! The image detail page will state the status, PD images will be clearly marked "Public domain".
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain - Wikisource. Like Wikipedia, tends to be useful from time to time.
• nlo's gallery Public domain photos

U.S. Government sites

• images.google.com - use the advanced search feature to return images from the site or domain ".gov". {{PD-USGov}} may apply to such images.
• http://home.nps.gov/applications/hafe/hfc/npsphoto.cfm - National Park Service
• http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml - A portal to US Government images and photos. "Most of these images and graphics are available for use in the public domain"
• http://memory.loc.gov/ - U.S. Library of Congress digital image archive. (Some images are still under copyright, so caveat emptor.)
• http://images.fws.gov/ - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imagery, to be relaunched
• http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/ - NOAA Photo Library
• http://images.usace.army.mil/main.html - United States Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library
• http://photolibrary.usap.gov/ - Antarctic Photo Library
• http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/opchomea.htm - USDA Online Photography Center
• http://photogallery.nrcs.usda.gov/Index.asp - USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Photo Gallery
• http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/ - USDA Agriculture Research Service Image gallery
• http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/nhcorg11.htm Department of the Navy - Naval Historical Center Photographic Section
• http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=458&q=162298 Pennsylvania Game Commission Public Photo Gallery (Birds and Mammals)
• http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/ - DoD Defense Visual Information Center (High-resolution US military imagery; use with {{PD-USGov-Military-DVIC}} license template.)
• http://www.defenselink.mil/multimedia/ - Current DoD publicly released image
• http://visualsonline.cancer.gov/ -Great resource for electron microscopy and histological images. Includes general biomedical and science-related images, cancer-specific scientific and patient care-related images, and portraits of directors and staff of the National Cancer Institute.
• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/index.html History of Medicine at the National Library of Medicine. Most but not all of the exhibitions are PD. Clicking on "Metadata" near the bottom of the page will generate a popup window with information that includes Rights usage for each page.
• http://nationalatlas.gov Lots of .GIF image maps, such as Congressional District maps, all in the public domain.
• http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/broadcast/photos/ - U.S. Census Bureau Photo Services; all images in the public domain but a photo credit is requested.
• http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov - Congressional sites have a broad variety of public domain images, especially photographs of representatives and senators.
• http://www.gpoaccess.gov/pictorial/index.html The Congressional Pictorial Directory, also available in book form.

Search Engines

• everystockphoto.com - Searching over 4.3 million public domain and creative commons photos including wikipedia and NASA. Free user accounts with drag and drop collections, and other features.
• PicFindr.com - Searches a hand picked collection of public domain-, free stock photo-, and photo community sites. Includes the ability to search by rights! (whether you need to give credit, ask permission or not)
• Spffy.com - Searches one billion stock photos and video, including free images, public domain, creative commons, royalty-free and rights-managed.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources"

Best Regards,

Neil

This is a true story. Enjoy! And, afterwards, let's discuss the benefits of an online presence even though you may not always be able to connect a purchase with a specific form of advertising.

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Sunday morning, August 13^th, 2006 - My wife and I woke up early and were enjoying a cup of coffee on the 6x14 sq. ft. balcony of our condo. Our beautiful view - the backside of the building directly behind ours separated only by a small strip of sparsely forested land with run-off drainage snaking through it (I'd call it a creek, but that would be a gross overstatement). As we were sitting there talking and taking in what scenery was available to us, we both watched in disgust as one of the residents in the building across the way walked out onto their third floor deck and scraped the remnants of their breakfast plate out onto the ground. I had had enough! It wasn't like we lived in a slum or anything; in fact, we lived in one of the most affluent counties in the country. It was time to buy a real home.

We went into the office (we all know this is really the second bedroom) and sat down in front of the computer. Three bedroom two bath minimum with at least a half an acre and absolutely NO HOA! I hate other people telling me what I can and can't do on my own property.

Speaking of property, my wife always laughs at me every time I refer to my house as my property. I still love her though.

After four solid hours of searching every site we could find hosting RE listings in our area, we had our search narrowed down to three houses (yes - we are every realtors dream). Two of the three that we could find within our budget that fit the majority of our requirements were your everyday run of the mill suburban floor plans located in newer neighborhoods. Unfortunately with HOA's and neighbors whose houses you could almost touch if you reached out of your window far enough, these posibilities were quickly scratched off of our list. I just couldn't deal with a HOA.

This left us with one possibility, a home built before the signing of the Declaration of Independence - mid 1700's - I can't remember the exact year. My wife and I jumped in the car and drove by the house just to get a look. We really liked what we saw so we went home and called our Realtor and asked her to set up a viewing so that we could inspect the property. Two days later we met our realtor at the house, toured the property and decided that we were, in fact, interested in making an offer. Priced above our budget, we decided that we would offer as much as we could afford - which, I believe, was $30K below asking.

Our realtor called their agent and informed him via voicemail that she had a client who was interested in putting a serious offer in on the house. This so called ‘agent' never returned her call. Now, I do not know exactly what she did, but I know that she did everything within her means to get a hold of this guy. Four days later, still no response. That evening (Saturday the 19^th), we learned that the house was now under contract with another buyer. Our agent shook the grapevine a little bit that evening and found out that the new buyer was also a client of the homes agent. Hmmm...very fishy if you ask me.

Our agent informed us that we should look for another home as, even though we had our hearts set on this historic home and with all of the problems that can come up during the inspection when trying to close on a historic home, that it was possible it would come back on the market. However, due to the shenanigans of the home's agent, our Realtor advised us that it was better to just move on.

Sunday morning, August 20^th, 2006 - My wife and I spent another 4 hours searching the internet for the home of our dreams. Just as before, we were able to narrow our search down to one house. It was beautiful; it was within our budget, no HOA, half acre, smack in the middle of the county we have chosen for settling down. To my surprise, it had been on the market for just one day and today, they were willing to schedule a viewing that evening. We immediately called our Realtor and asked her to get us an appointment. She called us back - we had an appointment for 7:00 pm.

We went to the house, on sale as the result of a divorce. The female homeowner was there and our Realtor instantly hit it off with her as she had also recently been through a divorce. As we were touring the house, the homeowner, devistated over her pending divorce began to cry, our agent and my wife both consoled her. It was a touching moment for all of the women (My wife should have written this section as I do not have the ‘feelings' to fully describe the situation. Anyways, we toured the house, loved it and decided to put an offer in that day. Our offer was $1K above asking as a sign of good faith. You see, for the listing price as low as it was, there was a lot of traffic that day. We didn't want to lose the opportunity so we jumped on it.

The next day our agent called with the good news. The offer was accepted. We later learned from the homeowner herself that because of the kindness of both our realtor and my wife - that she was going to accept our offer even if there were others that offered more. All because she wanted to make sure that the home went to a nice young couple, and we seemed to be that couple as far as she was concerned.

Just a note: The first house we wanted to offer on had its contract fall through about two weeks later. All of the sudden - that agent was interested in answering his voicemail. Did we still want to offer? Did we want to visit the property again? Could he answer any questions for us?

We had one thing to say to him: Kick Rocks!

********************************

OK, so there are a few more morals to this story than I saw when I originally decided to write on this topic.

1.) A strong internet presence with regard to RE listings / advertising will likely assist a Realtor in closing deals - and you may never even be able to sufficiently link the sale to a specific site or listing service provider. However, you will find that if you ask your client how they found out about a listing, many times they will tell you that they found it ‘surfing the internet'.

2.) Always be nice to others when they are vulnerable. It will give you good Karma. And we all need good Karma.

3.) As a Realtor, you should always be available and willing to communicate with clients and potential clients as well as requests from other Realtors. When you are only in it to serve your self interests, others can see that, and will eventually come to the same conclusion that we did about the agent for the historic house: Kick Rocks!

Thanks for reading my Blog and your interest in me.

Best Regards,

Neil E. Broten

As always - don't forget to list all of your listings with me on www.Ubadoo.com.

See my profile for more detailed information: http://activerain.com/realestate_marketing_advertising

neil@ubadoo.com

Let me preface this blog by stating that I am not a RE expert. My opinions on this subject are derived from the fact that a large % of everyone I am related to is in the RE Industry and, due to that, half the people that I know are in it as well. I just hope that my opinions can spur further conversation about the topic being discussed. Thanks.

***************************************

The best possible way to get a listing from friends and/or family is to ask them for it. If someone you know is about to, or even contemplating, putting their home on the market - go right up to them and ask them if they would consider listing their house with you (while handing them two of your business cards - one for them and one for someone that they may know who needs a listing agent). If they seem at all responsive to your request, take a few more minutes and give them a detailed description of how you plan to market their listing and why you believe that you would be the best Realtor to assist them.

When it comes time to list - they will not only remember that you asked them for their business (so to speak) - But they will also be much more inclined to offer you the business - simply because you showed an interest in assisting them. If you don't ask, you will likely never get their business. If you do ask, you are much more likely to have them give you a call at listing decision time.

However, there are times when allowing others close to you to fully delve into your finances is not a situation that a seller might welcome. Lets say you have asked someone for their business/listing and three weeks later you find out that they have gone with a different agent. When this happens, do not get angry with them as there is almost always a valid reason for this.

If you asked them for their listing and they did not give it to you - they will often feel obligated to tell you why they went with another agent. If they don't ever mention it - it was most likely because of their comfort level in sharing their finances - or the shame of showing you the financial horror that they have to deal with every day.

To proactively counter the situation described above. If, when you are initially asking a friend/family member for their business and you feel that there is some immediate hesitation at your requesting their business, explain to them that you understand that sometimes people are not comfortable sharing their financial information with friends/family and that you can respect that decision. Then make sure to offer to assist them in finding the Next best possible agent to assist them. Usually when this situation takes place, a good Realtor will be able to easily negitiate a small part of the commision in return for the referral. In the future - you may find that even though they did not use you - they will gladly refer other business your way because of your candor with them during your previous interactions with them.

Thanks for reading my blog - I hope I have been of assistance to at least one person.

Best Regards,

Neil E. Broten

As always - don't forget to list all of your listings with me on www.Ubadoo.com.

For a Limited Time Only: Unlimited branded listings with unlimited linked photos - ALL FREE - for two months - email me to find out how. neil@ubadoo.com