Same coat, but with a few new buttons…

Click Away

One of the really cool things about blog analysis software is that it gives the author a good idea where people are clicking on the blog, which essentially tells the writer what the readers are finding most interesting and relevant. (Important note: I can’t tell who is clicking, just where…so your privacy is totally safe.) I spent some time this weekend analyzing how people use this site, and what they tend to read the most. The answer was very clear:

Home Sales Data

The most clicked links on this site (by far) have to do with home sales data. There’s a shocker – it is a real estate blog, after all. Whether it’s homes for sale in San Carlos, pending sales, or homes that have already sold, readers want real data on what’s happening in the San Carlos real estate market, and this information is usually not that easy to find. Until now…

New Buttons

While I haven’t changed the background (a.k.a. theme) of this blog in the past 2 years, I have changed the structure quite a bit. It’s akin to putting new buttons on an old coat — I simply haven’t found a better “coat” for this site, so I’ll continue to change the buttons to make it better.  And here are three new ones that you should know about: (go ahead and click one of them)

How to use ‘em…

You’ll find these three buttons conveniently located at the top of the site, right in the middle.   The subject content is pretty self-explanatory, but there’s a lot more information here than meets the eye.  Let’s look at an example:

If you simply click on the “Homes Sold” button at the top, it will show you ALL of the homes that have sold in San Carlos over the past 6 months — in a single click.  Once you’re in there, you can sort by price or by square footage.  Pretty cool, eh?

But let’s say you’re interested in homes that sold only in White Oaks, or just homes that sold for less than $1M?    Got you covered.   If you move your cursor over the “Homes Sold” button at the top of the blog (not the one in this example,) you’ll see a whole array of options magically appear below the button…including “Homes Sold in White Oaks” and “Homes Sold in San Carlos: <$1M” just to name a few.   Simply move your cursor down, and it’s there — all in a single click.

The same principle works with the “Homes for Sale in San Carlos” and “Pending Sales” buttons.   And the data is pulled from a live feed, so it’s always current.   So go ahead and try them out, and let me know what you think.  If there’s a different way that you want the data sliced up, just let me know.

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Psst!!.. do you like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to the site for free, and you’ll get updates sent automatically to you. And for more information about San Carlos, be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook and on Twitter.
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New Feature: Search Surrounding Communities

Need to look around?

Haven’t found the exact home you’re looking for in San Carlos?  That’s certainly understandable, considering that right now there are only 49 homes for sale in the entire city.  Or, perhaps just want to compare San Carlos prices to those in nearby communities?   No problem – it’s very easy to do this from the site.   Introducing the newest module to the White Oaks Blog…

Search In Surrounding Communities.

I have added a new module in the left sidebar titled “Search in Surrounding Communities.“    Like every other home search that you can do from this blog, there are two key features that most other sites don’t offer:

• Single-Click Search.  When you click on the “Homes for Sale in San Mateo” link for example, you will immediately see a map that shows every home that’s for sale in San Mateo…on the first click.  The search parameters are already pre-defined, so you don’t have to spend 10 minutes filling in a bunch of annoying data fields just to start your search. Just click once and you’re there.
• No Registration Required.     You don’t need to register to use the search (unless you want to take advantage of the email alert system, or you want to customize and save a favorite search.)  It’s free, and you can search for homes in complete privacy.

See pending sales, too…

Since I added the pending sales link for San Carlos, it has quickly become one of the most visited links on the site.  So I’m happy to be able to provide you with the same information for other cities as well.

Here are the community links that you’ll find in the “Search Surrounding Communities” module.   Go ahead, check ‘em out..

Belmont:

• Homes for Sale In Belmont
• Pending Sales in Belmont

Redwood City:

• Homes for Sale in Redwood City
• Pending Sales in Redwood City

San Mateo:

• Homes for Sale in San Mateo
• Pending Sales in San Mateo

Menlo Park:

• Homes for Sale in Menlo Park
• Pending Sales in Menlo Park

Burlingame:

• Homes for Sale in Burlingame
• Pending Sales in Burlingame

Have any additional communities on the Peninsula that you’d like to see?  Just send me an email, or post a comment below and I’ll include it on the site!

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Psst!!.. do you like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to the site for free, and you’ll get updates sent automatically to you. And for more information about San Carlos, be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook and on Twitter.
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Twitter and the White Oaks Blog…

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how I use Twitter as a vehicle to provide instant updates on real estate news or just things of interest in San Carlos and Emerald Hills (the two areas I write blogs about.)   Basically, it’s a great platform to send instant updates on something that’s important, but may not warrant an individual blog post.

Here’s an example:   Every weekend I create a blog post entitled “The San Carlos Week in Review,”  where I list what homes sold and what new listings hit the market during the past week in San Carlos.    But what happens if I see a fantastic new listing early in the week, or a particular home closes escrow that you’d really want to know about?   I certainly don’t want to wait until the weekend to tell you about it.  That’s where Twitter’s technology really shines, and that’s why I use it as the backbone for feature entitled “The Very Latest” that you see in the left sidebar.   I like to think of it as a “micr0-blog.”

But that’s not the purpose of this article.   As I mentioned in my first post about Twitter, it took me a looooooooong time to figure out how to best utilize this technology that everyone was raving about.   I have always viewed Twitter as “A solution that’s looking for a problem,”  and apparently I’m not alone in this view…

Check out this funny clip from Comedy Central about Twitter, and how it has impacted just about everything we do today…whether we realize it or not!

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Psst!!.. do you like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to the site for free, and you’ll get updates sent automatically to you. And for more information about San Carlos, be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook and on Twitter.
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The White Oaks Blog now optimized for mobile browsing…

Here’s a cool new feature on the blog I wanted to share with you.  For those of you who view the blog via a mobile phone (iPhone, Treo, Blackberry, etc..,) the White Oaks Blog should now be MUCH quicker for you to view.   I just optimized the site so that it automatically detects if you’re using a mobile browser — if so, you get a version of the site that is much lighter and cleaner, and consequently loads much faster.   I tried it with and without the optimization, and the results were amazing.

The best part about this is that there’s nothing you need to do.   The web address for The White Oaks Blog remains the same, but you’ll notice that the title of the site will read “The White Oaks Blog Mobile” when you access it from a mobile device.     Check it out and let me know what you think.   I have incorporated the same feature on my San Francisco Peninsula Blog as well as The Emerald Hills Blog.

iPhone users: 

Please let me know which version you like better — the full version, or the “light” site.  Since the browsing capability of the iPhone is so good, the optimization setting allows the iPhone to be treated as a “normal” browser, so I can easily switch the iPhone back to the normal site without impacting any other mobile phone browser (Windows CE, Opera, etc..)

Happy Reading!

(credit to Dave Smith of the Real Estate Blog Lab for this great find…)

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Psst!!.. do you like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to the site for free, and you’ll get updates sent automatically to you. And for more information about San Carlos, be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook and on Twitter.
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New Site Feature: “The Very Latest…”

I have been experimenting with the free social networking service Twitter for a number of months now, basically trying to figure out how to best utilize this interesting technology as a real estate tool.  If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s essentially instant messaging on steroids — you can blast out small updates of up to 160 characters, known as “Tweets”, to whomever happens to be “following” you on Twitter.  So instead of sending an IM to one person, Twitter enables you send your latest thoughts to perhaps tens, hundreds, or more of your best friends.   Since it’s limited to 160 characters, it’s also cell-phone friendly, so you can send and receive Tweets on your mobile phone.

The problem I’ve always had with Twitter is that it’s a solution looking for a problem.  Twitter markets the use of their service with the catch-phrase “What are you doing?”    It’s an interesting concept, and many people consequently thought it was critically important to inform the world that they were having dinner at Town, or shopping at Lucky’s, or that they were late for their kid’s soccer game.  Well, I’m humble enough to know that NOBODY could possibly care what I’m doing during the course of my day.   I even bore myself sometimes.

But recently, I saw how the Mountain View Police Department starting using Twitter as a very effective way to instantly update their community on police incidents and citizen alerts — and the light bulb finally went off in my head on how best to use Twitter.

I often encounter things that are related to our community (or to real estate) that I think would be interesting for you to know  — but they don’t necessarily warrant a whole blog article; for example,  reminders on holiday events in San Carlos, quick updates on new listings, price reductions, or just forwarding an interesting link from the web.   This is where Twitter shines — consider it a “Blog within a Blog.” Or a micro-blog.

“The Very Latest…”

So I have added a new feature to the site called “The Very Latest” in which I use Twitter to forward frequent and (hopefully) interesting info along to you that should complement the information you’ll find on the White Oaks Blog.   It will also automatically post any articles that I write on my other two blogs:  The Emerald Hills Blog, and the San Francisco Peninsula Blog. “The Very Latest” resides in the upper-left sidebar of the site.   Let me know your thoughts on this — I’d love to know how others are using Twitter as well.

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Psst!!.. do you like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to the site for free, and you’ll get updates sent automatically to you. And for more information about San Carlos, be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook and on Twitter.
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White Oaks Blog Update: Improved MLS Home Search

For those of you who have used the MLS Search Engine on the White Oaks Blog, hopefully you have found that it’s pretty advanced and quite a bit different from many home search engines that are out there.  It has a great neighborhood view, which allows you to see all the homes that are for sale in White Oaks or Howard Park, for example, in a single window.   I also like the fact that once you create and save your own custom search you can sign up for the standard email alerts, or for you RSS junkies (like me) you can create your own RSS Feed.  This is a feature that I believe is unique to this search engine.

But not willing to rest on its laurels, this search engine just got a whole lot more horsepower.  Here are some of the new features that were just added in the latest release today:

• Re-engineered the search panel. The new search panel was designed to incorporate the vast amount of feedback we’ve received from our customers over the past few years, and we’re very pleased with the result.
• Pre-foreclosures (short sales, notice of default, etc) and foreclosed (bank owned) properties.   We’ve also developed a proprietary algorithm that analyzes each property’s description to determine whether or not a property is a pre-foreclosure or has been foreclosed upon. If you view the details of a property that our system has determined to be a foreclosure or pre-foreclosure, we will highlight the words in the description that lead our system to believe the property is in distress. If you view the details of a property that the MLS specifically marked as a pre-foreclosure or bank owned, dsSearchAgent will also display an appropriate notice.
• Search for properties within certain school and school district boundaries. The school search box is an auto-complete box and will start showing the names of the schools / districts as soon as the user types the first two letters.
• And, coming soon…search for FSBO and Make Me Move™ properties that are listed on Zillow.com. You will be able to look at properties that they might not otherwise be able to find in the MLS.

These are just a few of the new features that you’ll find on this greatly enhanced search engine…so if you have a few minutes, give it a test drive and let me know what you think.   Simply move your cursor onto the  “What’s for Sale in San Carlos?” button at the top of the page and you’ll see all the different options for searching within San Carlos.

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Psst!!.. do you like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to the site for free, and you’ll get updates sent automatically to you. And for more information about San Carlos, be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook and on Twitter.
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