Austin Texas Real Estate Blog

I got a ticket a couple of months ago (I think in November).  Thankfully, it had been just over a year since my last infraction.  This time, it happened in a school zone (darn).  Admittedly, I was distracted, because I was running late taking my daughter to her art lesson.  As a further pathetic excuse, the school zone is oddly situated, since I entered it on one street, then it just sort of continues on another street after I turned, even though there are no blinking lights on the second street.  But that's neither here nor there - I messed up.

I wrote a funny post about how it took away AR time from me last year.  At least, I thought it was funny:

My Driving Habits Have Taken Away Valuable Blogging Time  

According to this particular course (which I really should have memorized by now), I read far too quickly!  At the end of each lesson, I am forced to sit for awhile before proceeding (which is why I am multitasking - I am doing the course while I write this post and hanging out on Twitter and Facebook). 

Let this be a lesson to all of you: Don't speed if you value your time here on ActiveRain, or at all, for that matter, since the material is simply stultifyingly boring.  If you don't already know the meaning of "stultifying", it basically means that it makes you dumber.  Look it up if you don't believe me.

I wish I could figure out why they don't ever seem to have the funds to update the course with new, fresh, hip video content.  Most of the photos and videos appear to be from about 1983 or thereabouts.  It's easy to tell from the parachute pants.  Kidding.  I guess they don't need to make it appealing, since it's not a movie that is optional to see.  ("Compelling....and mandatory.  Two thumbs up!")

Here's a quick quote from the course to give you an idea of what I am dealing with:

Intersections are the places where roads come together or cross one another. An intersection is technically the point at which curbs or edges of two or more roadways intersect or cross each other.

It is dangerous to pass another vehicle at an intersection and illegal in most instances. Such places include crossroads, railroad crossings, and shopping center entrances. Approaching the intersection, your view of the traffic is restricted by the vehicles you are passing -- and drivers entering the roadway will not anticipate oncoming traffic in the left lane. They may not even look your way.

Consider yourself blessed if you don't have to go through this anytime soon.

I spoke awhile last night with my good friend Liz Carter from Katy, Texas (near Houston).  Liz has struggled with a number of health issues this past year, including hepatitis C (currently in remission, although I'm not sure if that's the exact term), a ruptured appendix, and intestinal surgery. 

Currently, Liz is in the hospital recovering from pneumonia.  Her doctor told her that she could possibly go home on Friday if all goes well.  Until recently, she was recovering from two separate surgical incisions simultaneously!

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Liz pretty well during my time here on AR, and we have met in person twice, once at an AR gathering in Bandera, and then again at my birthday party last August right here in Austin (the picture shows me with Ricki Eichler and Liz during that event).  On both occasions, I was impressed with Liz's outgoing and fun personality, and we started something of a mutual admiration society.  For many years, Liz has been a top-producing agent in her market, and she is an assertive salesperson and a respected team leader.

I told Liz that I would be writing this post, and I made sure that it was okay with her that I share this story.  Her quote was, "I'm an open book."  For those of you who know me, you know how this would resonate with me. 

We spoke for awhile about the challenges ahead for Liz, and she has a terrific attitude, which is probably more than half the battle.  I know that she will face her recovery with the same determination and positive spirit that she has shown in her business over the years.

Please pray for my friend.  If you feel led to do so, feel free to re-blog this post and help spread the word, too!  I would also encourage you to stop by Liz's latest post and leave a supportive comment: Active Rain Members are true friends

One of the most amazing things that I have seen here on AR is the ability to positively affect lives for the good just by writing a few words.  Thanks for your prayers and support for Liz.  God bless you all.

The Austin American-Statesman (our local paper) recently created the Texas Social Media Awards, and I was pleased and flattered to have been nominated!  There are 125 nominees, and the judges will be choosing the Top 25 and announcing this "short list" on February 18th.  I also see this as another potential burst of exposure for ActiveRain, since most of the nominees are not in the real estate industry, so they are not members here.

What would I actually win if selected?  Great question!  According to the official site:

Each person on that list will be recognized by the Statesman with an award, a badge for that winner's blog and free tickets to a bash that we're throwing around the same time as South by Southwest (these awards are not affiliated with SXSW). An overall winner will be named at that time, too.

Here's where you can help.

Since they are taking the comments into consideration for each nominee, I would love it if you took a minute to stop by and leave a couple of remarks here about my social media/social networking involvement:

http://budurl.com/jasoncrouch

In other words, the comments that will matter are those left at the URL above.  Of course, you can feel free to comment here, too!

I don't want to give too much prompting with regard to the comments, but you could mention any or all of these topics:

• My blog here on AR
• Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
• My BlogTalkRadio show ("Twitter Tuesday") - http://blogtalkradio.com/jckc
• Any help that I have provided for you in the social media/online realm

Unfortunately, I can't offer you a proper bribe at the moment, but please know that I greatly appreciate any kind remarks that you are willing to leave at the link provided above. 

I don't know what my actual chances are of winning the whole thing, but I would love to make it into the Top 25!

Thanks so much for your time and support.  Have a great day! 

According to Yahoo's HotJobs, Austin is one of the top cities in the country where you could expect a salary increase in 2009!  The article states that the most recent salary increase figures available are from 2007, but these figures are strongly indicative of places where workers can expect increases in 2009 and beyond.  For the most recent statistics, Austin posted a 7.7% increase, which was the 6th best in the country.

Here's what they had to say about Austin:

"Building off of an already robust government labor sector, the University of Texas at Austin is a huge source of innovation. The area has been using UT's excellent programs from bioengineering to pharmaceutical research programs to invigorate both the technology and burgeoning pharmaceutical industries."

Having just passed my 12-year anniversary selling real estate right here in Austin, I can state with confidence that this is a terrific place to live and work. 

Currently, the buying activity levels are strong, although mortgage financing has been tougher to obtain for many lately.  Consequently, those who are pre-approved will find a variety of homes to choose from, and less competition than previously. 

If you are interested in reading the entire article, visit http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/salary-articles-10_great_cities_for_salary_growth-27.

If you are considering moving to the Austin area, you might be interested in checking out my online relocation package here:

Austin Texas Relocation Package

If you have any questions about the Austin Texas real estate market, please feel free to call me anytime at 512-796-7653 or email me at jason@austintexashomes.com. 

In case you haven't already seen my posts about this over the past couple of weeks, I have been hosting a talk radio show with Ken Cook every Tuesday at 11am Central time for one hour (noon Eastern, 10am Mountain, 9am Pacific).  We used to do it asbout an hour and a half earlier, but we moved it to the later slot and expanded from a half hour show in order to accommodate our guests and listeners, too.

Despite head-to-head competition with the inauguration last week, we ended up with 41 live listeners and 115 overall (archive included), which is terrific for a newer show like ours. 

Tomorrow's show should be a lot of fun as always, and informative, too!  We have a handful of social media issues to discuss first, along with a terrific guest for the second half of the show:  Tamara Dorris!  Tamara and I have become fast friends over the past couple of months, and I am actually slated to be on HER show Wednesday at 1pm Central.

If you would like to join us, visit http://blogtalkradio.com/jckc. 

We also generally have a pretty active chat room while we're "live".  Feel free to call in with questions, or just to give us a hard time.  We enjoy the challenge, or at least we can pretend to!

If you aren't able to make it during the allotted time, you can listen to any/all of our shows via the archive recordings at your leisure (same URL as above).

About Tamara Dorris 

Tamara holds a master's degree in Communications, a bachelor's degree in psychology, and is a certified hypnotherapist and Feng Shui consultant. An expert in human behavior, communications, and marketing, Dorris combines her coaching and real estate background to specifically support real estate agents with mind-set to help them build better businesses. 

She has appeared on dozens of local television and national radio shows, and been quoted as a personal development expert in national magazines like Seventeen, Weight Watchers, and Woman's Day. Ms. Dorris is a professor of real estate practices, principles, finance and property management and published author of personal development and real estate books.  

Tamara Dorris is the owner of Top Producing Techniques (www.topprotech.com), an agent and broker training and coaching community and is also an active agent in Sacramento, CA.      

As you can see, Tamara should be both entertaining and educational as a guest.  I hope you can listen tomorrow!

P.S. Last week, we started using Facebook to invite friends and contacts to listen in, and that has proven to be very effective.  At the moment, we have 34 solid attendees and 86 "maybes"!  Feel free to check out the Facebook event page if you like. 

You can also become a "fan" of the show here: JCKC Radio - Twitter Tuesday  

After having been hounded for weeks by my friend Julie Chapman to write a new meme, I finally decided to just bite the bullet and do it while I have a little free time tonight.

Here we go:

1. I sincerely considered a career as a cartoonist or artist when I was a kid.  I used to sit for hours copying the comics from the Sunday paper - Garfield, Snoopy, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, you name it.  I also have some sketches (somewhere) of entire rooms from my house and my grandmother's house.  I would choose a spot in the room, and draw everything that I could see while sitting there.

2. I cry at the drop of a hat.  So PLEASE stop dropping all of those hats around me!  Where did that phrase come from, anyway?  But I digress.  I seem to have obtained this from both sides of my family.  Here are a few things that will make me cry every time:

• McDonald's commercials
• Spontaneous gestures of love expressed from one of my kids to another
• The ending to "It's a Wonderful Life" (never fails)
• Having a prayer clearly answered, demonstrating God's love for me
• Certain songs from the late 70's, when I was about 7-9 years old

3. I am an only child, and so is my wife.  So were both of my parents, and my mother-in-law.  My father-in-law was not, but his brother is about 18 years older, so he was basically raised as an only kid.  With that in mind, our family tree sort of came to a point when my son was born 10 years ago.  That's one of many reasons that we wanted more children.

4. I have never travelled outside of the United States (except to cross the border into Mexico for a few hours), and I have lived in Texas my entire life.  Also, I have only visited a handful of U.S. states.  It may sound lame, but my wife and I don't really enjoy traveling all that much.  I prefer being around familiar stuff and people, I guess.

5. I played high school football, and I led the district in quarterback sacks as a defensive end on the team in my junior year. 

6. This may or may not seem noteworthy, but I read the entire Bible about a year and a half ago, and I am starting again soon, probably with a different translation.  My wife and I are both voracious readers, and now our kids are, too!  We are a family of readers, with literally thousands in our "collection".  The library was one of my favorite places when I was a kid.

7. There are certain phrases which will trigger a song lyric in my head, and I start singing to myself, or sometimes out loud.  I have the same issue with funny movie scenes.  Frankly, my wife and I have so many "in-jokes" now that it's ridiculous.  I see that as one of the perks of being together so long.  We understand each other.

My head hurts now.  Can I stop?  Thanks.

Two of our very best friends, Jay and Joy Hilscher, are the organizers of a 203-mile relay race called the Texas Independence Relay (that's them in the photo). Their second-annual big event is coming up in early March, and the deadline to register is January 31st.  I worked as a volunteer for last year's race, which was a lot of fun.  If asked, I will probably serve again. 

One of the things I noted was how social this particular race seemed to be, which was appealing to me (of course).  You could see friendships forming through the course of the event, and there were teams that had only recently met who were bonding rapidly.

I didn't even require the use of any major drugs to stay awake and alert during my overnight vigil last year, since it was a lively crowd.  I respected (and envied) their dedication to the sport.  With that in mind, I was surprised to learn that there were even a few bold solo runners (i.e. they ran the entire course alone!). 

The course starts in Gonzales, Texas, and runs all the way through Houston to the San Jacinto Memorial (in keeping with the Texas indpendence theme).  There are 40 course legs of various length, and the team size is 8-12 people.  Along the way, the race passes through many small Texas towns, including Shiner, Moulton, Flatonia, Schulenburg, Weimar, Borden, Columbus, Altair, Eagle Lake, Wallis, Orchard, Simonton, and Fulshear.

The race has received very positive press and everyone that I encountered last time around seemed interested in running again this year.  I would anticipate a strong showing based on my conversations with Jay and the word-of-mouth nature of the running community.

If you're interested in learning more, visit www.texasindependencerelay.com for WAY more information than I provided here. 

I took my kids to see "The Tale of Despereaux" earlier this evening.  It's rated G, which always makes my life easier, since there are no worries about language, or super-scary scenes for our kiddos. 

The title character is a small mouse with giant ears, who is essentially fearless.  In fact, his teachers and parents are concerned about him, because he doesn't cower or scurry like the other mice.  Instead, he seems to possess an inborn calm.  The setting appears to be during medieval times.

The opening scene involves a rat that causes someone to die (by fright perhaps?), which leads the king to make a series of proclamations that steal the joy from the kingdom, along with the very sunlight itself.  Dreariness covers all during this time.  As with many movies of this genre, our intrepid hero is placed in a tough position, and has a chance to save the day.  I won't give away any key plot points beyond that.

I mentioned to my wife that the animation was fantastic, much like a lushly illustrated storybook.  Clearly, over the past decade, they have made huge strides with animation, so I guess that's not as surprising anymore.  What made this movie unique was the fact that they used multiple types of animation, some for the primary story and some for Despereaux's daydreams, which look more like they were created with actual paper.

I would highly recommend this movie for the whole family, especially if you have kids aged 5-10.  The story is engaging and entertaining, and it wasn't terribly long, clocking in at around 85-90 minutes. 

My seven-year-old daughter loved the movie so much that she proclaimed, "That was a GREAT movie!!" as the closing credits began to roll.  We are going to buy the book so that she can enjoy that, too.

Thanks for reading!

Ken Cook and I have been hosting "Twitter Tuesday" each week for the past two months or so.  Why did we choose that name?  Well, we both like alliteration, and we talk about Twitter and some of the related tools on the show.  We also talk about ActiveRain (since we met here) and using social media to grow your business.  Thus far, each of our guests has been a contact that we met while using Twitter.

I mentioned in a post last week that we were hoping to break our "live" listener record, which we did handily, with 57 people!  At this point, it seems to be steadily increasing.  I would love to break the new record again tomorrow and each week thereafter. 

One interesting development this week - we have our first paid sponsor!  Real Estate Client Referrals is sponsoring the show for one month, and possibly longer.  You mean we can actually make some money having this much fun?! 

If you have time, please join us tomorrow at noon Eastern (11am Central).  The show runs for exactly an hour. 

You can access it right here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/jckc. 

The call-in number is (347) 215-7478, which will enable you to ask questions or just to listen if you're not in front of your computer when we are broadcasting.  You can click on the current episode to listen live or you can check out a couple of our previous shows there, since we moved from our previous URL recently.  We generally have a pretty active chat room going as well.

We have two modern-day Renaissance men joining us tomorrow:

• Brian Carter (http://www.briancarteryeah.com/)- Stand-up comic, motivational speaker, and SEO Jedi Master - hilarious dude

• Ed Bisquera - (http://blog.pdxloan.com/) - Professional musician and mortgage consultant

As always, Ken and I will probably be having a good time with our litany of crazy and funny sound effects, which seem to entertain us to no end.  Feel free to call in live with any questions, or if you want to rib us.  We really don't mind.  All in all, we have a LOT of fun and (believe it or not) we do prepare a reasonable amount before each show.  I hope you can make it!

Here's our new JCKC Facebook page if you have been listening and want to become a "fan" of the show. 

Thanks!

If you know me at all, you know that I am the type of person who tends to wait awhile before making any "big" purchases.  I have had my vehicle for 8 years now (it has over 160,000 miles on it).  We were recently forced to replace our refrigerator after 14 years of solid use.  I also don't like to move, frankly.  We built this house 6 years ago, and I think we'll probably be here a good while longer.

On the flip side, I am also someone who really enjoys gadgets, especially if they can make me more productive in my business.  The iPhone meets both of these criteria.  After having a Treo for the past four years, I was ready to make a move, so in December, I did.  I bought a black 16GB iPhone at Best Buy about a month ago, and I am a raving fan.  Okay, maybe not "raving", but a big fan nonetheless.

To say that it's been life-changing might be a little bit extreme, but I am VERY pleased with this phone.  The only bothersome thing has been the fact that it can't also serve as my MLS key, which my Treo did, so I have to keep up with one other device now (updating, etc.). 

So, what do I like about it?

BROWSING

The Safari browser is pretty fast, and the screen is large enough to easily read web pages.  You can also zoom in and move the image around very simply.  It has made it much less necessary for me to have access to a computer when I'm out and about.  It automatically senses how you are holding the phone by using a accelerometer and adjusting the display accordingly (horizontal vs. vertical orientation).  This is the same type of technology found in the controller for the Nintendo Wii. 

EMAILS

It downloads very quickly, and I've been able to receive PDF and other email attachments much more easily now.  As with the internet browser, this has made my mobility much better lately.  I don't have to worry about returning to my home or office or having a laptop with wireless access.

APPLICATIONS

Where to begin here?  I recently read that the iPhone has some 10,000 apps now, all of which are accessible from the phone itself (i.e. no external device needed to acquire them).  Most of the apps I am currently using, including TwitterFon, the Facebook app, and Shazam, are FREE.  I'm not sure what the most expensive application is, but the non-free apps seem to range from 99 cents to around $9.99.

I think Shazam is one of the coolest apps I've found so far.  Have you ever heard a song on the radio or in a restaurant and wondered about the title and/or artist?  This application allows you to hold the phone up to the speaker and find out very quickly, with its tune recognition abilities.  I tried it out one night while my wife and I were at dinner.  "Is this Steely Dan?", she asked.  I was able to confidently answer, "Yes, it is, and here's the song!"

SnapTell Explorer is another one I've used a bunch.  It enables you to take a photo of a book, DVD, or CD cover, then find out where you can obtain it online, along with pricing from eBay, Amazon, etc.

Overall, the applications seem to offer a virtually never-ending source of entertainment and productivity.

CAMERA

The camera is decent, but not stellar.  I wouldn't necessarily use it to replace a good digital camera, but it works for taking pictures on-the-go.  I don't actually like the fact that both I and the subject have to be extra-still in order to get better shots.  However, the pictures that turn out well are suitable for blogs and sharing via email.  I think they sacrificed the megapixel quality in favor of other applications.

MUSIC

Since it serves a double use as an iPod Touch, the iPhone is exceptionally easy to use as a high-quality MP3 player.  The sound quality of the headphones (ear buds) is terrific in my experience.  Also, nothing beats showing off the music part to friends, when it looks like you are quickly scanning through a catalog of CDs with the flick of your finger. 

THE OVERALL COOL FACTOR

Let's face facts for a second.  Even if someone doesn't have an iPhone, they have to admit that this device is pretty darn cool.  From the unique ringtones, to the sleek design, to the ease and versatility of use, this is my favorite tech purchase yet (that is, if you don't include my HDTV). 

To sum up, if you're looking for a new phone, you really can't go wrong with the iPhone.  I highly recommend it.