Las Vegas Real Estate Blog

It seems these things come in cycles. You open your email up and watch as all of your contacts for today start appearing. Ho, what's this?  Contacts from AR. Potential clients? Investors wanting to spend millions in your market?  Confused, scared home buyers needing expert guidance and assistance?

Ah, no....ads for a motorforum and cheap pills.... 

That was case this morning. However, I have to give kudos to AR for taking swift action. By the time I was ready to delete and report the offending posts, they were already taken care of.  Considering the size of this site now, its very impressive.

Spammers have gotten more creative in the last year because of better spam control techniques. Google, Yahoo and MSN have all avowed to fight spammers and remove them from their indexes.

What about your own site or blog?  There are some easy steps to take help eliminate quite a bit of spam.

First, remove your email link from your home page. You can list it in plain text, but a link to contact page from the home page will help remove some spammers. On your contact page, make sure you have a security measure (like here) in place. The minimally sophisticated spammer will be running a script that can auto populate a contact form.  Same thing for comments in a blog, although most blogs have no follow in comments so there isn't much value to spammer. However, some still spam them.

Second, you can install some anti-spam software on your blog. There are several paid and free ones that are excellent, just google the term and you'll find them. -Charles

As with any large (and sometimes small) city, "taggers" spray paint images and words on neighborhood walls, businesses and basically everything in between, sometimes hitting the same area multiple times. Mayor Oscar Goodman has been very vocal about tagging in the past, vowing to implement stricter penalties for taggers, citing that Clark County spends more than $30 million a year to clean it up.

Now the community is getting involved and held its first first Graffiti Awareness Day in Nevada. Planning to get the community out to affected businesses and paint over the graffiti. Materials were made available from 8 am to noon today at the Hollyood Recreation Center and the West Flamingo Senior Center.  The city of Las Vegas and the County are also handing out materials as well.

I'm always looking for places to promote my site and blog. I came across one that I hadn't heard of before, ogog.org. Its run by a non-profit organization, which in itself makes it unique. It looks like its brand new, without a lot of users (yet).

You have to have an openid account to sign up. So it will take you a little bit of time to sign up, but both sites are FREE. So, of course, I signed up at both places: http://lasvegasrealestate.myopenid.com/  here is my OgOg profile. I don't know if the site will make it, but I have found some very interesting posts there already. Most of them are technical in nature (although there is some funny stuff too). -Charles

Foreclosure effects a lot more than just the home owner.  

Last week we received a call from a luxury home builder in Las Vegas. Apparently, one of the homes in the subdivision that he built went into foreclosure. The resident that had lived there had six dogs originally. When she moved out (after letting the place fall apart), she took all of the little dogs with her and left Milo in the backyard. Milo was chained on a short chain, with no shelter from the hot sun and nothing to lay on. To say he was filthy is like saying that Las Vegas gets a little warm in the summer.

We managed to get the chain unattached from his neck and coaxed him into the van. Once he was free of the house, he started to warm up to us. After he got to our house, it was apparent that he was never allowed inside before.  Now, several days later, he is getting the hang of things and he enjoyed his bath immensely. As you can see, he cleans up rather well!

Milo is now on a waiting list to enter the Pups on Parole training program run by Heaven Can Wait Sanctuary.  He is an extremely lucky dog since he is  a BBD and was left for death by his prior owner. He gets along great with our other dogs and is a quick learner. If you are interested in adopting him or another dog in need of a good home, visit Heaven Can Wait Sanctuary. They also have wonderful cats looking for a home as well.

KB Home has been busy at Chaco Canyon in Mountains Edge!  Last Friday my husband and I went out to Mountains Edge to see how construction was going.  Chaco Canyon is at the edge of the development and is very secluded at the moment. Currently a small section of Chaco Canyon has been completed and residents have already moved in and are enjoying the many Mountains Edge amenities.  Construction is ongoing in the rest of the community and is scheduled to be completed next year.

The Chaco Canyon neighborhood consists of three communities: Anasazi, Bonita and The Villas.  Most of the homes offered are two story, although there are few single story plans available exclusively in the Bonito neighborhood.

If you are thinking about buying one of the many Mountains Edge homes available, there are a lot of choices and builders to choose from. Several neighborhoods have model homes with more planned.

Feel free to visit my website for Mountains Edge parks, neighborhoods, floor plans and amenities or call me at 702-493-8033. info@lvrealty.net - cr

Related:

Summer Trail
Mountain's Edge
Live in Middle Earch

RAINERS......PREPARE FOR GLORY!!!  Okay, so its not that 300, but our 300th post. Well, its been just under a year since I received an invitation to join Active Rain. So many changes have happened its hard to name them all. New features added, then removed (anyone remember the forum?) and the site is still evolving. Even the look of the site has changed quite a bit from the original vision. Others were invited to join (a shout out to our Canadian friends) and now there are over 33,000 rainers.

You try to make milestone posts special, but today I'm just coming up empty!  I'd like to think that the prior 299 posts were either informative, funny, thought provoking and above all else, ORIGINAL. Having read probably hundreds of posts here on AR, its obvious that some will just never get.  Blogging for points is fine, just please stop trying to hide it. Its not fooling anyone, so please stop. We've all seen them. We all know what they are. So I'm saying its okay, stop fighting it and let it go. After we've read the 10th post from you with the same opening couple of sentences is not too hard to figure it out.

On the flip side, there are some very talented writers here on AR. Some use great gimmicks for their posts, others use humor, but most simply sit down and write a well thought out and informative post. I have my favorites of course, like Kristal Kraft, Ken Smith, Jay Thompson and Ben Kakimoto to name just a few (I have left off several excellent bloggers, the list would be too long).  For the novice bloggers out there I would recommend that you subscribe to these blogs.  Each person has their own unique style and above all, write unique content.

With the addition of Localism, Activerain has taken the next big step in accomplishing what they originally intended to do: give agents a chance to compete in the serps against the big companies like homegain, etc.  The other goal was of course, networking which is safe to say they have accomplished.   A quick search through the posts will show you the writing on the wall. Activerain works as a social networking platform. You'll find several instances of members networking with each other, and in many instances, making new friends across the country.

Since my last milestone post, I've put up some great posts (if I do say so myself) and some even better ones! :)  Here are  a few posts that I recommend you take a look at:

Best posts never read part 1  this post came about because of some comments made by other members about the state of the featured board. There is an old saying about not being able to please all of the people all of the time that certainly applies here.

For Loan Officers: How to attract realtors  this post came out of an email correspondence with another member who asked for my advice.  As the correspondence grew, I decided to put the information in a post so that others could benefit. I also asked several top realtors in other areas to add their comments as well. This is post is a great example of what this site can achieve.

30,000 looming I included this post to give everyone some perspective on growth. This post was done in early MAY. Now, just over a month later, there are over 33,000 members. I also played Carnak and made some predictions for the coming year. It will be interesting to see if any of them were correct.

Kindness pays I included this post to just remind everyone that your actions always have unintended effects. You never know what may happen when you help someone out.

Well, thank you all for coming you've been a great audience. Don't forget to tip your waiter/waitresses!  I'll be here all week. -Charles

If you have been a faithful reader or visitor of lvrealty.net, you know that we are dog people (the photo is probably a big clue as well).  Jacqui and I are active in rescue in the Las Vegas area and have rescued and placed hundreds of dogs over the years.  In this month's People magazine, there is an article titled Dog Discrimination.  In it, it talks about plight of our canine friends in the US, and about one particular group: BBDs.

What is a BBD?  It stands for a big, Black dog. "It's two strikes," according to Jacque Lyunn Schults, director of the ASPCA's shelter and outreach program.  Because dogs over 50 pounds are more complicated to keep and require more exercise and their dark fur is more menacing to people. 

The full article is in the June 11th edition of People magazine.

For anyone out there looking to adopt a dog from a shelter, please take a look at these wonderful animals. You might just find your next best friend. -Charles