Using Writely to create HTML Documents for Real Estate Ads

I thought I'd try using Googles writely (Now out under the Google Docs and Spreadsheets umbrella) to create a post. All the color, bold, italic, and hyperlink below were done without knowing the html tags, but rather by using menu items similar to Microsoft Word.

My folks Business is a Southern Michigan Real Estate Company

In addition to working on their webiste, I am also tinkering with a Fun Trivia Site about People

The site also lets me post directly to to my real estate technology blog without having to cut and paste at all, creating even more value for me as a user. Definitely worth a look for both the html challenged, and those who know html but just want to write, and not deal with tags.

If your intersted in posting real estate ads on sites like craigslist and backpage - which allow you to insert the html - you could create the document in the Writely document editor, then select "edit html", and then paste the html into the appropriate spot in your craigslist or backpage ad.

As I have hinted before, more on sites to post free real estate listings on coming soon.

Housing Statistics in the Wall Street Journal Today

There's not much of a technology focus in this article, but significant enough to be worth mentioning.

The Wall Street Journal came out with some housing statistics today (October 9th), complete with graphs that visually demonstrate the tremendous shifts in the market over the last couple of years. It's worth taking a look at the charts if you can get a copy of todays journal. Here are some of these numbers:

Existing Home Sales for August: 6.3 Million - down 12.6% from previous year
(Source: National Association of Realtors)

Median Home Price for August: $217,590 - down 1.8% from previous year
That's DOWN, not UP!!
(Source: National Association of Realtors)

Housing Starts for August: 1.67 million - down 19.8% from previous year
(Source: Commerce Department)

Supply of Homes as of August: 7.5 months - nearly three months longer than the previous year according to the Journal. That means it would take 7.5 months to sell all the homes listed in August, wheras last year it was only around 4.5 months.
(Source: National Association of Realtors)

There are a couple of other numbers in there, but they all indicate a 360 degree shift in the Real Estate market in the last year. For those interested the data is on page C10 (Money and Investing)