For Sale By Owner Homes

In February of 2008, the Oregon Legislature passed SB1080, a bill that prevents illegal immigrants from obtaining an Oregon driver’s license. This bill was passed to prevent driver’s license fraud, as well as to comply with the first steps necessary for homeland security regulations.

Basically this bill requires that prior to issuing, renewing or replacing a driver’s license, driving permit or identification card, that Oregon’s Driver and Motor Vehicles Services Division must ask license seekers for proof of U.S. citizenship or permanent legal status

According to property manager Clifford A. Hockley, President of Bluestone & Hockley Real Estate Services, some landlords are upset that this could lead to huge vacancies in their rental property. He believes that the vast majority of the illegal immigrants in this country are renters and if they can’t get a drivers license, they won’t be able to drive to work and get a job and therefore, these renters will move to another state where there are less restrictions and leave Oregon landords in the lurch.

Not sure what to make of this. I find it hard to defend the rights of those who are in this country illegally. Are landlords so desperate for renters that they would rather rent to criminals and illegal immigrants than have a vacancy? That just doesn’t seem like good business practice.

JUST LISTED!

Wow - a wonderful Side Lake MN log home for sale - priced at $625,000. If you are not familiar with this area - you really need to take a weekend to check it out. It is one of my favorite spots in all of Minnesota. McCarthy Beach State Park really does take you back in time. Old logging camps, huge pines and probably the best sand beach in Minnesota - the park is truly amazing.

This gorgeous lake home is a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from the state park. If you have been looking for something in this neck of the woods - this could be the one.

Check out the rest of the pictures and contact us with any questions - as always - happy lake home hunting!

Contact ZipRealty at 1.800 CALL ZIP -- Don't let low price fool you! Expn'd ludington(almost 2400 sf) is best of the best! 2-sty foyer/entry w/hdwd flrs flow' g into fmrm & spacious eat-in kit.W/silstone(quartz)cntrs, pantry & upgr'd applcs.Cstm wood blinds thru-out w/ plantation blinds in fmrm. Spac mstr w/walk-in clst, lux. Bath w/spa tub & sep shwr. Full bsmt w/9' clngs. Stub'd for

While reading Real Estate Webmasters forums, I came across a fellow named Ron Park from Tuscon who was enamoured with the Redfin site, so he hired a tech company in India to try to re-create Redfin’s mapping technology and cababilities. He wanted a Redfin clone for the Tuscon real estate market, and it’s unclear if he just wanted the mapping capabilities or if he was also going to copy their business model too, but he’s unhappy with the final product.

By hiring a discount off-shore company and Google maps instead of MS Virtual Earth, he got a pale imitation of the actual Redfin technology, and the map is slow and buggy.

It looks like, from his comments on the forums, that he paid about $10K for a site that probably would cost about 10 times that to develop, but now he wants to dispute his bill and he wants his money back.

By doing a little research he could have had an acceptable mapping feature to frame on his website using Real Bird, for $19 a month, that integrates listings from his own MLS. I use Real Tech and get an adequate mapping tool using Microsoft Virtual Earth and I pay $10 a month for that, and I’m able to put it on Seattle Dream Homes for a seamless home search. It even comes branded with my photo and contact information, and there are some great features that allow a shopper to save their favorites and forward those to me for future viewings, plus they can save their search criteria and have new listings forwarded to their in-box everyday.

The folks from India, taking the directive to make a Redfin clone seriously, even added a “Sweet Digs” section and a “Redfin Forums” feature. No Kelman-type PR master was included, however.

Contact ZipRealty at 1.800 CALL ZIP -- You'll be charmed from the street, enchanted as you walk in enjoy the big sunny family room off the big eat-in kitchen with a big list of news and updates. Roof, furnace, carpet, paint, flooring, bath, cabs, fixtures & wonderful landscaping. Perfect for the new family or those looking for a ranch lifestyle. Close to everything you'd need...Freeways

We get a lot of emails - last year, 19,000 email requests went through LakePlace.com alone. When we see trends - we do our best to address them. One of the big advantages of real estate investing is the 1031 exchange which allows you to save thousands of dollars in capital gains - if you are interested in learning more - visit the forementioned articles on LakePlace.com (which were contributed by attorney Stacy Johnson of Heartland Exchange LLC - thanks Stacy!). When we launched LandBin.com - we immediately noticed a lot of people asking if a contract for deed was available on several properties - so we posted an indepth article on that subject as well.

If you have some interest in a subject - and you think there is a good chance that someone else out here in cyber space may have the same interest - shoot us an email and suggest the topic…we would love to hear from you!

Have a great weekend - and as always - happy lake home hunting!

Google has taken the beta label off a project that is significantly younger than Gmail, which remains in beta. Google Website Optimizer has been available to AdWords customers for the past year, but now the company is making it available to anyone who wants to test out different web site layouts.

Basically, the tool lets you try out different designs on you web page to see which one performs best. Want to see which ad unit is more likely to get people to click? Want to see which RSS icon is more likely to get people to subscribe to your site’s feed? Google Website Optimizer will let you set up an experiment and track the results.

There’s also a new Google Website Optimizer blog that you can follow for news and tips related to the tool. Since I do my own SEO for my websites, I’m looking forward to fiddling around with this new tool.

Contact Anna Kaparis at 847.372.6293 -- NICE WELL KEPT CHARMING HOME. COZY LARGE LIVING ROOM AND SPACIOUS KITCHEN. NICE FENCED BACK YARD. BARRINGTON SCHOOLS. PRICE TO SELL. GREAT STARTER HOME.

So it has been about 2 months since we officially launched LandBin.com. For those of you who are not familiar with it - LandBin.com features the internets largest database of Minnesota land for sale and Wisconsin land for sale. Currently the site is displaying 49,000+ land, acreage, lots and farms for sale - with 246 new listings today!

Since the launch - over 100,000 people have visited LandBin.com and they have viewed 788,000+ pages. The record day so far is 6,367 visitors and 15,326 page views. So far, this month (as of 04/23/08) LandBin.com has had 58,017 visitors and 245,316 page views.

While the site is currently #1 on Y! for a couple of key phrases like mn land for sale & wi land for sale - we have not been seeing great results in The Big G…that is…until yesterday. Cameron and I were pleasantly surprised when we caught a glimpse of what could be the future. LandBin.com was ranked very highly on the Big G yesterday for some very competitive keywords and phrases. Although these rankings have disappeared for the time-being - we think we somehow ended up connecting to an updated G server and we are hoping (and keeping our fingers crossed) that those results are currently propagating through the massive system. Time will tell. If the results we found yesterday do happen to stick - it will be one of our greatest accomplishments since getting into the internet marketing business 10 years ago. It took years and years to get LakePlace.com to its current position - and if we cut out 4 years of heavy lifting with LandBin.com - we will be very pleased.

Land prices are going crazy right now - the demand is super high. The big players in the online land market (currently) are LandsofAmerica.com, LandandFarm.com & LandWatch.com - they are all great websites..but down the road, LandBin.com will display more land listings than all of these websites combined - which we believe will drive traffic and offer buyers and sellers the same advantage LakePlace.com currently offers.

If you plan to buy or sell land in the near future - we hope you will consider LandBin.com. Have a great day!

Considering how bad the market is supposed to be, I sure am busy. I haven’t had time to write even though I’ve been trying to keep up with the news.

Did you hear that LendingTree has told its customers that former employees helped unauthorized mortgage lenders hack into its systems and steal customer information? Unbelievable.

And it’s been interesting reading about the Redfin misstep with Ms. Berg. Great shark footage from Sellsius.

Speaking of sharks, this guy at RCG may have jumped it with this one.

Hats off to Galen Ward for getting some big dough to help expand Estately. And the mention by John Cook was a nice plus.

Cindy Zetts, long-time real estate editor at the Seattle Times has a new blog, The Real Estate Deal.

And look at this cool castle for sale in Eastern Washington. It even comes with a moat.