More Nifty Web Tools...

Now this story from Inman News... There is truly a dizzying array of online tools available to real estate marketers. From Zillow to Trulia, the internet is awash with companies trying to capitalize on "Web 2.0" technologies to create a more instantaneous and interactive real estate sales environment. In the following video, shot recently at the New York event, "Real Estate Connect: New York City," panelists share some (lengthy) thoughts about what Web 2.0 tools are and how they can be employed within the context of real estate marketing. The linke is here...

Tenets of Online Ad Design

Falling into the "from the vaults" category, I happened upon an interesting blog entry written by Alex Kirtland, an information architect who writes about web-related design issues.

One of the issues we find ourselves increasingly concerned with is moving beyond thinking of ourselves simply as website designers and broadening our scope of expertise to create "complete" online presences for our clients. For instance, our clients usually want to market or advertise on the web and, as a result, we've created online newsletters, email blasts, designed online ads and, generally, tried to develop the expertise necessary to counsel them about the best use of their marketing dollars.

In the following blog article, Alex addressed the issue of the design of online ads. Always a challenge for designers, we must constantly balance the level of intrusion which any online ad places on the content of the reader versus the advertisers need to "be heard." In the article, Alex offers several summary design suggestions for artists, including: wrapping ads in borders to distinguish them from their surrounding content, clustering the ads in one location, and using "leaderboards" (full width ads running at the top of the web space) to best effect. In the end, the win - win proposition for advertisers to both be heard but also to not intrude on the reader's experience of web content. At any rate, the article's worthy of a peek...

Some Belated Holiday Cheer

The holidays have come and gone but, in the spirit of holiday cheer and in an effort to begin the New Year on an optimistic note, I thought I'd share some "let's put some things in perspective" news I found in the December issue of The Real Deal.

True, housing starts are down nationally and, in fact, many regions of the country have experienced price declines over the last several months. However, Ken Harney, notes several reasons for optimism in his December Real Deal column. Consider, for example:

• Despite the recent fall in both prices and sales, (in some markets) the overall upside of five years' worth of boom has been a positive one for the American homeowner. Harney, notes that, overall, the total equity owned by American homeowners is still at near-record levels, topping out at almost $11 trillion. (Total equity holdings, he notes, refers to the difference between the market value of the entire residential market, which is $21 trillion and outstanding mortgage debt, which is approximately $10 trillion.) So, then, American homeowners have more money tied up in their homes than (almost) ever before.
• Even in hard hit areas such as South Florida, most homeowners and homebuyers through most of the boom are still way ahead of the game. In South Florida alone, for instance, home values increased a whopping 130 percent between 2001 and 2006. Thus, even accounting for the double digit drops in prices over the last year, the net out for most homeowners in the region remains robust.

The sub-prime lending crisis is, of course, throwing the emergency brake on a train that was already slowing down, but, with the exception of those that bought late in the cycle, Harney counsels American homeowners to look at the bust within the light of the overall (significant) gains which were made in the first part of the decade.

And if that news doesn't perk you up, there's always that leftover egg nog in the fridge...