September Slowdown

As I sit trying to get better from being hit hard by a really bad cold or an early bout of flu, I am happy that I haven't been so busy selling real estate during my sickness but sad that our busy season is going through its normal slow-down after the school season began.  Real estate is seasonal and the slowdown at this time of year affects single family homes more than attached properties.  In fact, I had 2 offers on a Palos Hills condominium that went back on the market because financing fell through with the first buyer.

I love the Fall season but I hate that winter is right around the corner.  The leaves on trees are already changing and I hope to capture some beautiful Fall photos.  I'm already seeing Halloween decor on neighboring homes.  My husband junk picked an organ from someone's trash and will have our ghoul guy playing some creepy tunes on it.  That will be a one-time decoration as we're not storing that big thing just for Halloween.  I hope we have nice weather for trick or treating this year.  I think last year was a little cold.

Now that we're not so stressfully busy I'll be able to work on my final real estate website transfer from a long-time host/webmaster to a Wordpress set-up.  I hope I'm doing the right thing!  It's a big step.  Some clients of the site provider feel that the website itself helps them attract clients.  I don't think that's 100% true. Many of today's newest real estate website providers are building their sites using custom Wordpress themes.

I've written many posts on how I can no longer attain #1 organic search results because of Google's algorithm changes that put all the big real estate portals above my sites.  These are sites of mine that were #1 for many years.  One site fell to page 2 and my oldest site is still on page one but "below the fold."  That's why I created 2 new niche hyper-local websites, which I'll share my latest posts with.

The problem is, the big portals have outdated information and their crazy home estimates that can be 20%+ off!  That's a huge difference.  Yet when a buyer searches for certain keywords, instead of getting a good, local site from an agent that works in that particular town and has updated data, they'll get a huge nationwide portal with listings that have already sold and closed and other properties that are not up-for-sale.

One popular real estate site started listing homes that are in some stage of foreclosure.  Many of these homes will never be on the market.  Some of them will be taken out of foreclosure proceedings by the current home owners.  Yet this website lists them all.  I know some buyers that would go up to the home and start looking around.  I hope they realize that in many cases there will be an angry or scared owner that will call the police for trespassing - or worse!

Homes in Homer Glen

Click the link to see 2nd Quarter sales for single family Homer Glen homes.  I was hoping for better statistics and I'm hoping year-end data will be more positive all-around.

Orland Park Real Estate

I'm loving my new website with MLS search, or as it's called, IDX search through iHomefinder.  I'm trying out several different IDX providers on all of my newly vamped websites and will try yet another when I make my final change to my main website.  I created a pre-done search for Orland Park foreclosures and the link will take you to a blog post explaining foreclosures and some differences between a foreclosure and short sale.

Oak Lawn Real Estate

I created the same search for Oak Lawn foreclosures, so click the link and you'll read another blog post all about it.  Some of the searches I create can be embedded into individual blog posts, but those are more general searches such as by a certain price range.  When you get more advanced I can only provide a link to the pre-made search.

Real estates sales do continue throughout the year, so if you are still considering buying and/or selling property, give The Judy Orr Team a call at 708-536-8200.