IllinoisHouseHunter Blog

I spend a lot of time reading real estate blogs - But I always wonder where those great images come from.  Are people just grabbing images off a google image search?  Snagging photos or comics from other websites?  If you are - they are probably copyrighted images.  If you didn't personally take ...

Have you ever heard of the term "Media Literacy"?  The concepts been around for a while - it's a way of teaching people that you have to question the media, not take things for granted.  You need to do your own research - and consider the vantage point of the person presenting the story.  I worke...

I was reading a afew stories at Inman.com when Idecided to comment on one.  As I was registering to comment - I discoverd that agents could create a free profile and make it available to the public.  Before I created my profile - I decided to do a search in my area and see how many agents were li...

Foreclosure Widget - Cool, Customizable - So What? Once again, an innocent evening in front of the computer turns into an obsession. I spent the afternoon listening to talk radio and it was all about politics.  Telling you how I got from politics to the foreclosure widget is another blog entirele...

 A DIFFICULT TRANSACTION I recently completed a rather difficult real estate transaction with another agent.  I was the listing agent on a bank owned property.  The buyers agent worked with buyers that stuck with the process for over 3 months.  The property had multiple problems - water in the ba...

Foreclosure Bus Tours - How do they work? I've recently been obsessed with the idea of foreclosure bus tours.  I've been concentrating my business on short sales lately - and doing a foreclosure bus tour seems like a great way to get connected with buyers.  There are several going on in my area a...

Chicagoland Lock Boxes - 2 Different Systems? Today I traded in my old Supra e-key for the new ActiveKEY.  I was happy to get this new key - until I got home and started doing some research.  It appears that, while 3 Associations in Chicago's far west suburbs (including my own) are upgrading to t...

Active Rain Top 10 - Top 10 Lists I recently blogged about the Top 10 things for a FSBO Seller to consider when going it alone and got a great response.  Seems like everyone likes a good top ten list - so I thought I'd troll Active Rain for the Top 10 of all Top 10 Lists!  I am shamelessly puttin...

The results are in!  For May, 2008 here are the top resources real estate pros are looking for at Blue60.com -the resource directory for real estate professionals.  Top 10 keywords searched for in May, 2008: Marketing Real estate tools Real estate Mortgage leads Marketing leads Leads Domains Fsbo...

Cool Closing Gifts - Top Ten Early in my career, I ran into a client at Home Depot a couple months after closing.  We had a quick chat and I thought we had made a good connection through the sale process and beyond.  Then, just before leaving - he turned to me and said "You know, my wife was surp...