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A year ago I would not let a seller move out of a house until the property was sold.  She’d bought a condo and was really excited to settle into her new home.  I did not want her to have to neutralize the place, the home was beautifully decorated but some of the rooms would not have made sense viusally without her furniture and accessories. 

Staging a home is important, when it is occupied and when it is vacant.  

Real Estate guru Bob Bruss gives another big reason that moving out and leaving a house vacant can be a problem.  

“INSURER CANCELS INSURANCE ON A VACANT HOUSE

DEAR BOB: We just received notice that our homeowner’s insurance policy with AARP Hartford Insurance has been canceled because the house is empty. Yes, we are selling our home and have moved to a condo, but our many years of loyalty and our car insurance with the same insurer did not mean anything. Maybe you can make other people aware not to move out until after the house is sold. –William R.

DEAR WILLIAM: Most homeowner’s insurance policies contain vacancy clauses allowing the insurer to cancel some coverages if the home is vacant for more than 30 or 60 days. The reason is a vacant house is more likely to sustain water damage and vandalism.

Your situation will be a warning to homeowners to read their insurance policies and not leave their homes vacant for more than 30 or 60 days, according to the policy terms.”

Bob Bruss has a column on Inman News.  Inman is by subscription so I can not link to the entry.   

Read your insurance policy!!

Staging- Wood You Tell a Homeowner to Paint Cabinets?

There’s a Real Living ‘For Sale’ sign is in a music video on CMT.com but try as I might I can not see what the logo says, what the second circle contains, which would tell me where the video is set.  Not that it matters.  The setting, the people  look more country than Columbus. I thought Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas.  Lots of the midwest is a little bit country. 

Columbus is called a cow town sometimes.On our company intranet (Real Living, one circle)  it says: “Real Living has hit the country music circuit! A Real Living yard sign can be seen in the new Montgomery Gentry music video for their song “What Do You Think About That?” The yard sign is shown a few times within the first minute of the video. “ 

A country group, I had never heard of,  Montgomery Gentry ’s “What Do You Think About That” (full length video)  on CMT.com until reading about it on Real Living’s intranet site for agents.  Click on the song title to play the video… you may have to watch a commercial first.  Once I got a Chevrolet commercial, usually I get the opportunity to watch a commercial for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  Once or twice I got away with seeing the video without watching a commercial!

I like music videos.  I especially like music videos when they tell a story.  Although I am not a country music fan (just not a lot of exposure, I had a country period of a couple of years in the 90’s ) I like how even just the music in country music tells a story.

This video tells a story but I don’t really  get it.  The song is about gossip?  People talking about people?  People caring about what people think about them?  Or not caring?  There is a neighborhood, there’s a house with a Real Living sign, there is a couple who bought the house? There’s a moving truck.  Moving in? The motor cycle (a “Vengeance Banshee”?) There is a drag race? They lost me but I watched the video  over and over to try to figure it out.  So much so that I am craving Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. 

It’s a Real Living sign but I am not sure which market or franchise.  Real Living which is based in Columbus is in 20 states now.  I saw the logo but I can’t make it out. 

Our logo in Central Ohio as of the first of the year was changed from a big circle with HER in it to a little circle with HER in it and a big circle with Real Living in it.  Real Living HER’s logo is in the sidebar here.  That’s a bit of the local story.  

“I started a joke, which started the whole world crying,
But I didn’t see that the joke was on me, oh no.
I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing,
Oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me.
I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes,
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I’d said.
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I’d said.
Oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was one me.”

It’s a song from the 1960’s by The Bee Gees? It goes on and on and get’s kind of morbid….   A Columbus blogger started a meme, that started the whole blogosphere memeing. 

Actually Tina of Green Buckeye and another more personal blog did not start the meme.  Tina was tagged and Tina  tagged me.  Tina’s Media Consumption Meme was not on Green Buckeye.  It was on her personal blog, her blog for introspection…  her blog for seeking knowledge from the universe or looking inside…  Tina’s meme.

I did the  Media Consumption Meme  here on Columbus Best Blog but some people I tagged did it on their ActiveRain blogs.   They are real estate agents, they are people I know from real estate blogging,  most have a local blog, or real estate blog where something like this may or may not fit. 

I blogged about the meme a bit on ActiveRain.. or maybe I was blogging about Columbus Ohio’s  inimitable Doo Dah Parade…  or navel gazing.

Tina talked about blogging at Blog Tour USA.  I  hope Tina’s comments  made the video that Rudy took from sea to shining sea as they crossed the USA talking to bloggers, including one partly sunny afternoon in Central Ohio.   I would love a transcript of what Tina said to the “wanna be bloggers” or maybe they are really if truth be known “don’t wanna be bloggers.”   

We had name tags, some of us had familiar faces even…  but it was overwhelming. A high point of the day for me was Tina talking about blogging.    

Tina started a meme… or passed it on to me that is now going around in the Real Estate Blogophere, which is connected to the Green Blogosphere and the Financial Blogosphere and the Columbus Blogosphere. 

Active Rain Media Consumption Meme… some did the meme as members only post  but here are some public examples:

Carole Cohen in Cleveland

Jeff Dowler in the San Diego area

Eileen Landau in Naperville Illinois

Teri in the Dayton Area did the media meme on her TheBrickRanch blog.    

Bonnie Erickson did the media meme on  Real Estate Snippets   a St. Paul MN blog.

I know Toby in Delaware did the meme but I can’t find it. 

ActiveRain profiles of “Members Only” media memes on ActiveRain included:

Kelley Koehler in Tucson Arizona

Sarah Cooper  in Hurricane WV

Sally Cheeseman in Mililani Hawaii   

Anyone else catch this viral infection from someone who caught it from someone who caught it from Tina?

There’s a few memes going around ActiveRain. The original meme there was 5 Things You Don’t Know About Me but there’s also a book meme, a new members meme and the ‘Good News Plague’  Meme’s the word on ActiveRain

Technorati tag: Media Consumption Meme  

Thanks to Kelley Koehler in Tucson for bringing this to my attention.  Kelleye’s blog is www.MyTucsonBlog.com

Click on the image if you want to see what it says about forbidden content… on http://ColumbusBestBlog.com 

Games?  What games??

Who is SonicWALL?  Is this something on Kelley’s computer? It is I got an email from Kelley and talked to Kelley today. 

Games?  Clipper Games?  Monopoly Games?  It’s almost time to start blogging about Buckeye foot ball games, not that I am a fan really (I am a Badger.) Not that I am any kind of a sports fan really, but I live in Columbus Ohio… it is all about the Buckeye’s in the fall in Columbus Ohio… heck it’s pretty much all about the Buckeye’s year round in Columbus Ohio.

The games people play, every night and every day? 

I am getting very tired of the real estate blogging games people play.  I have been battling Web 2.0 Paranoia this week, partly it has to do with people following me on Twitter.

Thanks to Teri Lussier of TheBrickRanchBlog.com for sending me a link to Kelley’s mention of me on ActiveRain (it is Members Only entry nothing racy in it Kelley just doesn’t want this blog’s forbiddenness showing up on her Tucson AZ blog.)  Of course my heart stopped beating for a few minutes when Teri brought up that Kelley was blogging about me (paranoia… ) and my wayward blog.   Kelley’s blog was funny once I got over the shock of being “forbidden content. ”   

I have been getting emails about SonicWALL via the email address connected to CBB but I could not make heads or tails of them and thought they were spam. 

Is there some game here on Columbus Best Blog that I don’t see? Of course if you can’t read my blog because SonicWALL has forbidden you see it,  how could you tell me about it?

I hate to be an alarmist but there is not a lot in the local market to encourage a home owner to sell a house on their own now is there? 

Franklin County Market Report - August

Inventory is still high.  We are going into the fall. 

Financing is challenging.

Yet you see a lot of it, homes ‘For Sale By Owner.’   

Because they have no equity? 

Real Living HER’s message to sellers is:

“Bring along a professional. Studies show people get 14% more for their homes with an agent’s help. Couple that with our high performance 360° marketing and you’ll sell in no time.  Contact me today. I’ll handle the details.”

Contact me

Market analysis request     

It’s got to be worth more than a cheeseburger doesn’t it?  Can anyone explain ICanHas CheezBurger.com to me?  Please?