Carlsbad Real Estate Inventory - Jan. 6, 2008

Here are the maps of the South Carlsbad detached and attached inventory. First the detached inventory:

To see an interactive map, here's the link: Carlsbad Real Estate Inventory - Detached Homes

Here is the attached inventory. Note the change in the legend as the prices are a lot less.

To see an interactive map, here's the link: Carlsbad Real Estate Inventory - Attached Homes

Conclusions? The inventory is not excessive right now....fairly typical for this time of year. The prices are somwhat lower than the go-go days of 2004, but they haven't dropped like the inland markets (Escondido, Fallbrook, etc.) where the majority of the foreclosures have happened.

Margaret Hokkanen, Carlsbad Real Estate

Taking Real Estate Photography to the Next Level - Part 1

We take the photography of our listings REALLY seriously, and have found that producing the best photos in the area can really help sell listings and satisfy homeowners with your marketing. We have often been asked how we do what we do, and so this entry is intended to share some of our equipment secrets for the benefit of our colleagues. (Notes: If you are an agent in San Diego, we won't take your photos, but I will try to answer any questions.)

First, before I go into the equipment, I want to talk about what this is worth. I have spoken with a number of professional photographers who have their own equipment. I have shown them a few of our brochures and explain exactly what we are doing so that they can give me a realistic price quote. (The reason for asking is because sometimes during May/June, we can get pretty stressed with listings and some backup resources would be good to have.) The quotes usually come in around $2,000 to $3,000 for the photo shoot and assembly of the digital images delivered on a DVD. That's how good these photos are, and you, too, can create stunning images and can save a lot. OK, so that's the level that we're talking about.

I'll break up the equipment into components: camera back, lens, and other (tripods, flashes, etc.). For around $6,000 to $8,000, you can have a first-class equipment. Before you say, "My God, I'm not going to pay $6,000 on camera equipment," remember that the cost of the equipment is about 2 or 3 of the photo shoots that we would have to pay for if we were hiring a professional. If you absolutely will not buy the equipment, then, if you are near a good camera rental store (we have a Calumet store in our area that rents equipment), then you can probably rent all the equipment for 24 hours for around $500.

I would encourage you to buy, rather than rent, the equipment for simple strategic reasons. If you buy the equipement, you'll use it on every single property. Whether it is a condo or a rental or a $2M home, you'll take the photos with it. If you have to rent the equipment, then I can assure you that the calculus that will go on inside your head will be "This is just a rental, so I'm just going to use my point and shoot camera." This is understandable since the rental cost would gobble up a huge portion of your listing commission on a rental. BUT, if you buy the equipment, then you'll use it every time, and, hey, you can even take family photos too.

Camera backs. We use a Canon 5D camera back; cost was around $3,000. I went through the analysis of using a Canon Rebel (less than $1000) or some of their other equipment. Here's why I concluded that I had to get either a 5D or a 1D. I think (not sure) that all the digital SLRs by Canon can accept the Canon lens set. So, goes the rationale, I could buy a good lens and put it on a cheaper body and get similar results, right? The answer is no, you cannot. The cheaper bodies have smaller image sensors. The lens sends the full image to the backplane, but the image bleeds over the sensor such that the sensor only picks up around 2/3 of the image. What does that mean? It means that you don't get the full capability of that beautiful lens that you bought because the field of view has been reduced. This is IMPORTANT; you get what you pay for, and if you buy cheap, you'll pay a HUGE penalty. If you don't believe me, then visit the rental department and have the same lens put on different backs and you can see exactly what I'm talking about.

So, I had two choices at the time that I bought. The 5D was a 12 megapixel back, and the 1D was a 16 megapixel back. BOTH were full sensor images, so both caught the entire image projected by the lens. The 1D was around $8000 for just the back, and I didn't need to print photos that were 24 inches wide, so I opted for the cheaper 5D.

Before I get to the lens, I want to talk about camera tripods. If you're going to have a $5000 piece of equipment 5 feet off the ground, GET A ROCK SOLID TRIPOD. If that camera hits the ground, you'll be weeping for days. I use a Manfrotto tripod with levers on the legs, but there are many solid sets of "sticks." Get one that extends up to at LEAST 6 feet, preferably 7 or 8. There may be times that you need the height to shoot over a fence at the lovely canyon. You will discover that the sticks are only the first part, and that you'll have to buy the tripod "head" separately. You can buy either 2-axis or 3-axis camera heads. For still camera work, a 3 axis camera head is really nice because you never have to adjust the legs...just set the legs down, and the head can compensate for unevenness.

Having said that a 3-axis head is better, I use a 2-axis video head. Video heads are made differently because they have internals that allow one to gracefully pan a scene with very even movement. Since we also shoot videos of all of our listings, I HAD to have a video head for our video camera. But I didn't want to have two tripods. My video head has a quick connect/disconnect, so I bought an extra head connector to screw on to my camera. That means that I have one tripod and I can put either my Canon 5D or my video camera on the tripod within seconds. Since we are not in the photography business, that was a cheaper alternative, but I do have to make adjustments because I don't have a 3-axis head on the tripod. A good tripod/head can cost $500 if you are getting a video head; it will be cheaper if you're using a 3-axis camera head.

That's all for part one of this post. I'll post the second part later this week. If you read this and have questions, post your questions, and I'll answer them in the second part of the post.

Margaret Hokkanen, Carlsbad and Encinitas Real Estate

Review of Reverse Lookup Phone Services

I recently had my Blackberry stolen from my car. Guess what...I got it back! The fellow who had it seemed like a fairly decent chap...I don't know how to gauge these things. (Yes, he did buy my phone for a $100 from some unknown guy and he did use it for a month on my service....but he did return it instead of tossing it in a dumpster.)

In order to try to track the person down who had been using the phone, we had only ONE thing - the phone records of the phone calls that he made. So the challenge was to connect these phone numbers to people and people to addresses so that we could investigate and try to find out who had the phone.

In the process of doing this, we used several different Internet lookup services: 1) Information USA - available through the local library as one of their databases; 2) ReversePhoneLookup.com; and 3) Intelius. I thought I would share some observations about all three of these.

Information USA - This was free to us through our local library so the price was right. Basically, it has only land lines that are published in directories as far as I can determine. I was able to get a few phone numbers, but I decided to move on to for-fee resources for better performance (or so I thought).

ReversePhoneLookup.com - This cost $40 for a year's lookups. On the postive side, I would say the interface was a tad friendlier. Also, it gave the name of the local telecom provider who was handling the phone as well as the city origin of the exchange. NOTE: Now that you can transfer phone numbers across telecom providers and from landlines to mobile, I don't know if their data is accurate. (i.e., something tells me that they are probably giving the origin provider, not the current one). Anyway, I didn't care who the provider was, and I had only marginal interest in the exchange location (since a lot of these were mobile phones). AS FAR AS I COULD TELL, I could have gotten the names/addresses from InfoUSA instead of buying this service. If I knew then what I know now about what I would get, I would NOT have purchased it. Recommendation: Use the library's database; it's landline lookup is as good as this one.

Intelius - This service GURANTEES that they will get the name, and they'll charge you $14/number. In my case, they failed to deliver, so at least I didn't get charged. But here's what bugged me about how they operate....When you type in the phone number, they return a screen that says "NAME AVAILABLE" and "ADDRESS AVAILABLE" suggesting that if you buy the lookup that you'll get the name/address. Bascially, they are printing that for EVERY phone number that you key in WITHOUT REGARD to whether or not they can actually pull the name/address. I treat such marketing as a lie, and I don't like being lied to. It's bad enough that they misrepresented that they had the address, but they took 3-4 days before they told me that it was a no-charge situation. I didn't try to go elsewhere with the number because I thought they were going to produce results. Anyway, you get the point of the frustration.

Peoplefinders - This is a plug-in-the-name-and-get-the-name/number service. This allowed me to look up someone by name, and since I knew where they lived, they showed related parties. VERY INTERESTING. I didn't pay to actually pull the details, but the free teaser was pretty interesting because it gave me all the siblings names. (My thought was that if I couldn't get in contact with the guy who had the phone, then I'd contact all the siblings.)

But all's well that ends well. I hope this was of interest and value. If you have tried a service that you like, please leave a comment so that I know of other good ones for the future.

Margaret Hokkanen

Encinitas and Carlsbad Real Estate

Marketing Homes: Use DVDs!

If you or someone you know is thinking about selling their home, it is important to consider the use of full-motion video and DVDs. We have been doing this for years, and have gotten to the point where we own cameras, remote microphones, lights, Avid post-production systems and more. Here are a few of the reasons we have found that having video and DVDs is so important in selling a home today.

Click here to see some sample video.

• Open House 24/7. The most critical factor in selling a home for top dollar is marketing exposure. By having full-color brochures with DVDs in the flyer box at all times, buyers can take a DVD and watch it on their TV at their convenience. A DVD makes it easy for buyers to preview your home, and, basically, means that your house is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

• Relieves Burden. For some people, having to make way for buyers who want to see your home can be a significant burden. The most common examples are: 1) people who work at home; 2) people with medical conditions; 3) parents of babies/toddlers; 4) seniors or others for whom the disruption is unsettling; 5) homes with pets that get upset by the presence of strangers; 6) people who have a lot of work stress who try to relax during the weekend. DVDs allow every person who stops by the house to see the home in comfort on their TV. If the buyer likes what he/she sees, then a scheduled appointment to show the home can be arranged.

• Having a DVD takes some pressure off from showing the home to every buyer/agent, regardless of the request. When possible, you should allow people to come in and see your house as much as you can. But there are times that it just isn't possible. Due to home office situations (e.g., conference calls), health issues, or simply convenience, there may be times when showings would be extremely burdensome. With a DVD, the good news is that one can kindly say to the agent or buyer, "Now is not a convenient time, but please take a DVD home with you to watch on your TV, and if you like what you see, please call again and I will be most happy to allow you to see it at your convenience."
  

• A video is a great take-away gift for the interested buyer. We can't say enough about this! Buyers who take home a video of a home can watch it many times, show it to a spouse who wasn't able to see the home, and share it with friends and family to get extra input. This is a REALLY important feature because your home video will stand out among the available homes. We know -- we have even sold homes to people who had never seen the home before placing their offer on it!

• DVD, not CDROM, technology is CRITICAL. DVDs will play right on the TV set; CDROMs require a computer. For a DVD, you just put it in the DVD player and hit go; for CDROMs, media players, computer speed, etc. can cause compatibility issues. In short, having the home tour on a DVD means that buyers can relax in the family room while watching the video; it makes the home tour a pleasant experience and allows it to be seen on a big-screen TV. Finally, DVDs can hold about 7 times as much data, which means that the video can be much longer and much higher quality.

• Richness of information. Because a DVD can store so much video, the DVD can sell the house in ways that paper brochures and computer virtual tours cannot. Example: One one DVD, we filmed neighbors talking about the neighborhood and community and placed this footage on the DVD. This is great because the buyers feel really good about the home that they are buying and the community into which they are moving! Example #2: Where an elementary school is particularly strong, it can be great to get the Principal to say a few words about the school and the community. This brings a depth to the marketing that homes in other areas simply do not have.

• Ease of Distribution. Because DVDs are so compact and inexpensive to make, they can be easily attached to brochures, distributed to other agents, and distributed to nearby neighborhoods where a buyer may live. Once you have the video, it is easy to manufacture 1,000 DVDs, which is usually the minimum number that the Hokkanen Team creates for any listing.

Of course, once you have the cinematic grade of video, it is very easy to spin out the video file into a format that can be uploaded into YouTube or streamed from your own web site. If you want to see some examples, click here to see Carlsbad and Encinitas homes on video.

If this post was interesting to you, feel free to comment. If we get a few responses showing interest in videos, I will consider putting my top 10 hints to being effective in front of the camera while giving a home tour.

Margaret Hokkanen (760) 942-4242

Encinitas and Carlsbad Homes

Downloading Data to Your Real Estate Site the New Way

RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard)

A few months ago I found out that my MLS (Sandicor) supports a new data transmission standard for IDX web sites called RETS. That sounds really boring, but it is really great, and here's why:

Old IDX Way	New RETS Way
In the past, we had to download data via FTP. These FTP files were created by the MLS around midnight, and then you could download them around 2:30am. That was the only update you could get all day.	With RETS, you can query the MLS servers for the updates in the past 3 hours. This now allows my web sites to have nearly up-to-the-minute information for our users
The old FTP files were tab-delimited text files and you pulled with an FTP client. This was a compact and effective way to transmit the information when Internet connections were slow. Unfortunately, the information was encoded (A=Ocean View, B=Canyon View, C=Park View) for the various fields. One had to write the decoding programs and maintain them.	The new way is with a SOAP service call which uses http (the web browser protocol). That sounds complicated, but what it really means is that you can specify what you want in the URL/Address that you are requesting. For example, if you only want 3 fields of data, just ask for the three fields and that's all you get instead of having to download the one massive file. If you only want updates for the last two hours, ask for them. AND, if you want all the fields decoded for you, just say so in the web address! No more maintaining the decoding logic when they add a new option.
The old way required you to parse the entire update file.	Since you can ask for just the updates, you can have impose a smaller update requirement and just update those fields that need to be updated. Also, in our MLS (Tempo software from MarketLinx), the ModifiedDate field now has a timestamp so you now EXACTLY if your entry in your database is up to date. In the old FTP file, it was just a date stamp, and experience taught me that agents may update a listing 2 or 3 times when they are editing/previewing.
I also found that downloading photographs via the FTP servers was a bit of a problem. The technology was all there, but photos could be corrupted or missing. This was probably due to some bug in the copying process because they copied all the photos to a holding place.	With RETS I encounter fewer problems. Getting a photo is simply another URL request just like getting data, and since there is no holding place, there seem to be fewer problems.

Last week, our MLS sent all the people pulling IDX data an email indicating that they would be discontinuing the IDX data feed in Q1. I had already written the programming, so I completed the conversion to the new approach in a couple of days. So my site now uses RETS exclusively for updates.

For those of you who like the old approach, there is one other security benefit to the MLS. Every request has to be uniquely authenticated with your individual username/password. If someone starts handing out their username/password to a bunch of people, the overuse of the account will be immediately detected and a halt will be put to it. It's understandable why that's important to the MLSes.

Switching over to RETS is probably wise because this is the way for the MLS to provide all sorts of improvements without disrupting existing processes (admittedly once you are switched over). From the NAR meeting about a week ago, it sounds like over half of the MLSes support RETS, though some of them are not advertising it. So, if you want to switch your website over, ask your MLS about this new technology.

NOTE: Programming SOAP services with authentication and everything IS a bit on the complicated side. However, there are programs that you can set up a scheduled data pull, and then it creates a file on your machine or server much like the FTP pull. (Example: RETSconnector.com)

NOTE: If you are a real estate agent and doing your web site development in ColdFusion and are having any difficulties implementing RETS, contact us and I'll have my husband follow up with you. He's the programmer in the family.

Margaret Hokkanen

www.EncinitasCarlsbad.com

A Review of Geocoding Providers

We do a lot with geolocated information and maps, and I asked John to provide his review of the various geolocation services that he has had experience with.

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Geocoding providers come in various flavors from the highly value added to barebones geo location. Thank goodness for the US Census Bureau and their effort to geolocate the census data and offer it to the public for free. This has resulted in a number of vendors offering nearly-for-free Tiger line (Census) geolocation capabilities. That fact has brought prices down a LOT. A good example is http://geocoder.us/.

Having thanked the Tiger line vendors for bringing prices down, I have to say that the Tiger data is not particularly accurate (80-85%?, not sure). But, if you have no other choice, you can still get 80+% of the homes, businesses, or other information geocoded so that you can display them on maps with this data. That's good.

When investigating geo-coding services, there really are only a couple of source data. The tiger data is sort of the base line. There are also several private companies that create private mapping data; the two largest, I think are NavTEQ and Teleatlas. You've probably seen both of these names on various on-line maps around the Internet (Google, Yahoo, etc.) Having worked with both datasets, I can say that I prefer the Teleatlas data and I believe that it is of slightly higher quality (that's a personal opinion, but one grounded in experience), but both of them will give you results in excess of 95% usually. I cannot imagine how much effort it must take to send out cars with geocoders to continuously drive all the new communities in the US so that we can get quality mapping. The third solution is Microsoft's Mappoint. I'm not sure if they are developing their content or are acquiring it from a vendor. What I can say is that my experience is that the mappoint geocoding is inferior to TeleAtlas and NavTEQ.

So, the next question should be: Where can I buy this data? Here is a short list of vendors that I have used and can review. I tend to only go with very high quality providers as this is really important data for me.

ESRI - This is the granddaddy of mapping technology. They create mapping interface software (ArcView), though they don't create the lat/lon data for US Roads and instead license it from vendors like NavTEQ and Teleatlas. These are the folks who brought us the Shapefile for GIS. They have a web SOAP service that you can use to geocode addresses with either the NavTEQ or Teleatlas data (your pick). The cost is around $1200 for 100,000 addresses, and has to be renewed annually. If you're creating data for a large metropolitan area, 100,000 addresses isn't that many, but if you're in a rural area, then this is probably significant overkill. They run a first rate service and at a cost of 1.2 cents per record, it is quite reasonable especially given the quality of the company.

Melissa Data - This company seems to specialize in data validation and enhancement. I used their SOAP interface for geocoding addresses for several years, and they do a great job of breaking down the addresses into the component parts, returning standardized data. They even have calls to do reverse lookups on addresses, phone numbers, etc. They provide tools that allow you to improve the quality of one's data, and that's why I took an interest in them. I don't use them any more because I ran into a number of customer service issues and I also thought they had not adjusted their prices in light of ESRI and Teleatlas getting into the geocoding business. Customer Service issue: I got calls from the company saying that they were going to imminently cut off my service due to overuse, when, in fact, their system for counting usage was messed up. I did not like the effect of such calls on my blood pressure. Cost: For 50,000 addresses, they used to charge $1500 (as I recall). Now, if you need absolutely top-notch scrubbed data with enhanced address standardization, it might be worth spending nearly 3 times as much for your geocoding. But I just wanted accurate plotting of my addresses with Teleatlas data (which they can provide). However, we write our code in ColdFusion, and they had easy-to-implement examples to interface our ColdFusion programs with their SOAP services. It was a piece of cake. I'd probably still use them if their prices had adjusted to the market.

Teleatlas - In the 2005-2006 timeframe, these folks created an access via SOAP. However, as indicated above, I used Melissa Data's Coldfusion interface. Over the past couple of years, they've expanded their documentation and now have examples in Perl, Python, Java, etc., though still none in ColdFusion. So the time had come that I wrote my own Coldfusion implementation of their interface using their Java classes (actually, I hired a guy in Romania who wrote the code inexpensively and then I just adjusted it to create a custom interface). I just turned it on this past week, and I must say that it is REALLY fast, and their SOAP interface now provides Census data pointers as well as standardized address information and lat/lon data for the address sent to them. Cost: about 1.5 cents per record, BUT you don't have to commit to large quantities if you don't want to do so. You'll pay a little more if you only want to charge your account with 5,000 address calls, but this is good data and it's quite reasonable in expense. For more information, go to WWW.GEOCODE.COM

Google - Recently Google made its geocoding interface accessible. For years, you could not geocode addresses, at least not directly and get the lat/lon returned. THIS IS FREE! And it appears to be very, very good quality, and has an exceptional address parser. They do limit you to 50,000 pulls per month on your account. That sounds like a lot, but if your web site is also displaying their maps (each of which constitutes a pull), then you have to be careful.

Yahoo - Yahoo blundered a few years ago by not making their mapping stuff available to businesses for commercial sites that were exploring how to use mapping (i.e., you could use it if you were an engineer developing your personal web page, but if you were the IT director of the company, you couldn't tell your engineer to use it on the corporate web site). This resulted in thousands of folks (like us) turning to Google's mapping technologies. I saw the recent presentation at the NAR meeting where the Yahoo guy demonstrated how you could integrate their local data in their maps, and it was impressive (though not for the technical initiate). I mention them only because they now offer their geocoding service for free, but I cannot review it because I have never used it.

Microsoft - I checked into using the Mappoint servers a few years ago, but at the time I thought they were expensive and worked only through value-added resellers (i.e., cost-increasing vendors). I was not overwhelmed with the Mappoint dataset, so I did not investigate this further. They do offer some cool mapping technologies now (a few years later), so this might be something to check out.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

If you have no budget, use: 1) Google; 2) Yahoo; or one of the low-cost providers. If you have bulk files, go with one of the low-cost Tiger data people and that will get you 80% there.

If you have a modest budget with modest needs and want very high-quality commercial data, then you could go with Google (if you are not using their maps or the combined usage is under their limit requirements) or you can go with Teleatlas due to the low up-front cost requirement.

If you can spare over $1000 per year, then Teleatlas is a good choice. I can also recommend ESRI because they have all kinds of bells and whistles and are a tad cheaper than Teleatlas (even though they sell the Teleatlas data), but I don't remember that they provide the Census block info like Teleatlas, so use care if that's important. They have nice clean examples for most development environments. If you need some of the data cleanup and validation tools and are willing to spend at least double the price, then MelissaData has good servers and they have some good tools; but you're going to pay for what you get.

I hope this is useful for you. It's based on five years of working with these various vendors. Write us if you have questions.

John Hokkanen

Encinitas and Carlsbad Real Estate and San Diego County Real Estate

Review of Verizon Blackberry

Blackberry - Voice Service?

I bought a Blackberry not long ago from Verizon in order to connect my laptop to the Internet with high-speed access. I told the sales rep that I was replacing a Cingular (now ATT) PC Card, and the sales rep persuaded me that the Blackberry was no more expense every month and so I should get it.

A couple of notes about the purchase -

1. I learned that the charger for the Blackberry connects to the same port as the computer tether for the Blackberry. This means that you CAN'T run the Blackberry off the A/C while it is connected to the laptop. This means that if you run out of battery power on the Blackberry, then your PC is off-line until the Blackberry is charged up. They didn't tell me about that!

2. The Verizon Blackberry was SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the Cingular PC card. Different technology - 3/4 times as fast. Much better. I'm sure the PC Card running the same connection technology is equally fast.

3. They CAN'T turn off the voice access on the device. I learned this because the Blackberry was stolen, and I thought I had unlimited data access only to find out when the bill came out that there were voice-related charges. Verizon was very good about undoing the charges because they saw I had signed up for a data-only plan and that I had other voice plans. IMPORTANT - Don't assume that the voice is turned off, because it isn't. This could be an asset if your phone died and you wanted to use the Blackberry as an emergency phone, but it costs 25 cents/minute.

4. The web browser did a commendable job on pages that were designed for a small screen. I created a custom and password-protected webpage so that I could pull showing instructions from my Blackberry, and it was quite speedy and pretty easy to use. This opens all kinds of possibilities.

5. I thought about having voice service when I bought it, but decided that I wanted to be able to talk on my phone while I was using the Blackberry in my hands. I didn't want the confusion of trying to do both things on one device at the same time. That said, I thought their browser function was really cool because it highlighted phone numbers on web pages and allowed one to click on the phone number to dial it.

All in all, it was a good purchase. HOWEVER, since the device was stolen, I need to buy another device to hook up my pc for open houses, and I think I am going to go with a PC card instead. Mainly, it solves the power issue identifed in paragaph one above. Call if you have questions.

Margaret 760-942-4242

EncinitasCarlsbad.com