Reason #7 to Love Oklahoma City

Everything is laid out on a grid. It is very difficult to stay lost in Oklahoma City as all the streets are laid out in a giant grid, like a checkerboard with two diagonal streets that criss-cross the grid. While in Washington, DC last week, I walked to the subway station every day to get to the main hotels where the convention was held. I was doing great until the Supra welcome event. I walked to the subway station and got off at the right stop, what I did wrong was I exited at the wrong end of the subway. I didn't realize there were two exits. An hour and a half later, after walking in circles, I gave up and called my daughter in OKC to help me navigate back to my hotel. After another 20 or so many minutes I was finally where I needed to be. I have GPS on my phone but it would not work. Part of the problem is that DC isn't laid out on a grid- there are many one way streets and a large circle (similar to Madison where I have also been lost) that dominates the area and where many streets dead end.

The experience confirmed how grateful I am to live in the wonderful city of OKC!

Happy Easter OKC!

Today was an amazing day! Repeatedly throughout the day I just closed my eyes and basked in the warm breezes of Oklahoma. I am entering my third year in OKC and I still can't quite get over my love of the Oklahoma seasons. I think OKC is one of the best kept secrets in the entire USA. 4 distinct seasons but mild and short winters and only a few intolerable weeks of summer humidity, The remaining 44 weeks of the year are paradise.

There is so much to do and to see in OKC. On Saturday we took our 2 year old grandson to the big Easter Egg hunt on Council. From the press releases it was my understanding that they expected over 5000 people and there were over 100,000 (yes one hundred thousand) eggs prepared for the OKC children to find. We had so much fun encouraging our little one to fill his basket!

Later that evening, after my daughter and the foreign exchange student we are hosting, Kristina, spent some time at Penn Square Mall, we headed off to Bricktown. We rode a 3-D dungeon ride, helped Kristina pick out some postcards to bring back to Germany, and then took the canal water taxi tour. This tour was great and I learned quite a bit about our city. We ended the night with dinner at Earl's where we enjoyed true Oklahoma barbeque.

This morning off to church followed by brunch at my eldest daughter's home. We were delighted to watch our grandson search for more eggs and his Easter basket. Everyone played yard games and I thought how fortunate we were to live in such a beautiful city. I have spent many Easters traveling through blizzards to get to church in Northern Wisconsin. I can recall only a few warm Easters in 20+ years of living in Wisconsin. OKC is truly an urban paradise. No wonder our real estate market is so vibrant!

CIE Launches Tomorrow!

Wondering what the OKCMAR/MLS Van is doing all around town? Staff and RCA committee members have been hosting informational round tables for the commercial practitioners since early February. In fact there is a presentation this morning with Cambridge Properties. The CIE has been a monumental 2.5 year project for staff and the RCA and it is with great relief and anticipation that all the hard work is finally a reality!

The OKCMAR Board and RCA have worked together to help solve the challenges faced by our commercial practitioners. Although soaring costs and decline in revenue is only one of the issues in the commercial market it is an issue that our visionary REALTOR leaders could directly address. Understanding that economic development is followed by home sales the two groups worked relentlessly over the past two years to bring an affordable and efficient CIE to OKC. In addition to affordability the CIE is locally owned and locally managed to ensure that OKC commercial associates and brokers have a system that is specific to the OKC market.

As we enter phase 3 of the far reaching ARCS (Allied Real Estate Commercial Services a wholly owned subsidiary corporation of OKCMAR) plan I would like to take a moment to thank the incredible leader-volunteers of this project and my staff who have worked many evenings to make the CIE a reality. Although so many have worked on this project I think it is important to specifically recognize the three leaders who have worked on this project since its onset and are greatly responsible for its success: Bart Binning, Karen Graves & Nancy Ice. If you get a chance to interact with them in business thank them for the hundreds of hours they took away from their businesses over the last three years to bring this incredible service to OKC.

How's the Market?

Oklahoma City continues to hold off the housing decline with an increase in sales over last month and over last year (2009). Volume was up with the median price up several thousands of dollars over last February 2009. Inventory is down and the average days on market decreased significantly from 94 days to 85, less than three months. For the lay person reading the blog a shrinking inventory (less homes for sale) leads to an increase in home values. It is a simple economic law of supply and demand.

What makes OKC so different than the rest of the nation? The low unemployment rate has a significant impact. Jobs do equal homes. MAPS 3 also has assisted in keeping the OKC market strong as OKC continues to draw commercial development due to its progressive governmental leadership and favorable business tax climate. The final key is the strength of OKCMAR REALTORS and the OKCMAR & MLSOK strategic plan.

Recently the OKCMAR annual survey was analyzed for all its write-in comments. One comment in particular is relevant to this post. (Paraphrased) "Since the commercials and the billboards do not market me specifically they have no value. I would rather have lower MLS fees". The MLSOK used its 2008 tax refund to extend the billboards for one more year. The boards promote the value of using an OKCMAR REALTOR in the real estate transaction and encourage the public to search the public-sided MLS site, www.centraloklahomaproperties.com.

Once the public is on the site the listings have a lead generation feature getting the lead back to the preferred associate or the listing associate. The listings are all syndicated through listhub which when the interested party clicks more information an email is sent to the listing associate to contact the customer. However, even more important is the inherent statement that the OKC REALTORS are confident in the market and that the public can be too.

All the tools in the MLS make transactions easier and faster and put information that promotes the stability of the OKC housing market and the value of the REALTOR through the depth of data available. Your MLS isn't just responding to the market rather the strategic initiatives are protecting the OKC market. The MLS leadership has positioned OKC REALTORS and the OKC housing market to withstand the national housing crisis. The Boards of Directors of both corporations, MLSOK & OKCMAR should be applauded for their far-reaching response to the storm they saw on the horizon.

Here's an Interesting Thought From Inman

Adam Taflinger, MLS Help Desk Manager, attended the technology track at the Inman Conference in NYC this month. One of the thought-provoking concepts he brought back was a from a session on website marketing. The speaker suggested that REALTORS of the future will save a lot of money and increase their brand awareness if they eliminate their websites and put their time and energy into the FREE social media websites.

The speaker stated that was what he had done. He replaced his traditional website which was very static and any changes were more dollars to the website vendor he used, with a personalized link to the public-sided website his MLS offered (We offer this too.... keep reading), facebook page, linked in profile, free blog site and a twitter page. Of course he used this items correctly and purposefully. To understand how to use these items for business building please go through the DOMUS U tutorials and sign up for the webinars. This is a free service of OKCMAR.

While this isn't a recommendation from me it does lead to many of my articles and posts on this blog regarding website analytics. Unless you are tracking sales to website expenses you are doing yourself a disservice. It is essential that you fully comprehend and analyze where your closed transactions (not just leads) are coming from and then after all transaction-related expenses did your net from that sale outweigh your expense of the generation.

This is certainly something worth investigating, especially if you can't directly track a closed transaction(s) to your site or your site is costing you more than the net income you are generating from the site activity.

I found a great short little video from the San Francisco Inman Connect that I hope will give the members a sense of the information we are receiving when we attend this conferences. Connect to Inman Video Here.

Also for a link from your social media or personal website that is personalized to you from the public sided MLS go to our public sided search site home page, centraloklahomaproperties.com and in the lower left click on the members only link. This will take you to a page that will generate the link based on your associate ID in Tempo 5.

Bacon Frying in a Black Cast Iron Skillet

We had another successful sleepover with the two year old grandchild. The reason we are doing this is to prepare for grandson #2 in March (Yes we know it is another little boy). This morning went much better than the first. It made me think of how much I loved staying overnight at my grandma's. As the oldest of 5 it was wonderful to be the only child in the house and to have so much attention focused on me. Perhaps that is why to this day I love a stage.

Staying at Grandma's was an adventure! My grandparents owned a large dairy farm (From Wisconsin, remember? LOL) although it was pretty much just for them by the time I came around. My grandpa worked as a construction engineer for Boldt and my grandma was the dietician for a nursing home. The farm was mostly empty save for a few cows and pigs and several gardens. The old farmhouse was full of secret hiding places and tunnels and grandma boasted that John Dillinger hid out in the tunnels for several weeks. I think he was considered more of a celebrity up north rather than a fugitive from the law.

But the mornings were the best. Grandma and Grandpa never got out of the habit of rising at 4am to start their day. By 5am I was awakened to the wonderful smell of coffee perking on the stove and bacon frying in a black cast iron skillet. Grandma always made me pancakes with real maple syrup they had tapped and ice cold milk from the cows with the cream rising to the top. I still love the smell of coffee!

I guess that is really what owning a piece of ground and a home is all about, whether you live in Oklahoma City or Sugar Camp, Wisconsin. It is about a sense of belonging. A place to build memories for your children and grandchildren. It is about community. The best place in the world to start that journey is Oklahoma City. The REALTOR public sided site, www.centraloklahomaproperties.com , is a great place to start looking for that home. It is updated every 20 minutes with all the available real estate in the central Oklahoma area.

Home truly is where the heart is and thank you dear readers for allowing me the indulgence of a trip down memory lane.

Oklahoma City Metro Home Searching Made Simple

OKCMAR & MLSOK have launched their billboard campaign promoting the new public-sided website: http://www.centraloklahomaproperties.com/ This new site is rich with information the consumer may use when looking for a home in the Oklahoma City Metro area. OKCMAR is very proud to offer this exceptional tool for people looking to buy a home in the Oklahoma City area.

There is something in it for the agents too! On the home page, at the very bottom is a members only link. Clicking on that link will give the agent and the broker in depth reporting on the number of hits a particular property (which they have listed) has received. This ia a great method to keep in contact with your sellers! Send them the report every week via email.

Brokers, while your at it, take advantage of MLSOK's free website syndication to the major search engines by registering with ListHub. Go to wwww.listhub.com and click create account. Fill out the fields- make sure you choose Oklahoma City as the MLS/Association you are affiliated with and then choose all or pick and choose the search engines you want utilized.

MLS is on your side- working for you!