Every industry has a version of snake oil for sale. In the fifties asbestos siding covered millions of square feet of beautiful wood siding and trim. Today, many manufacturers are promoting the virtues of insulating paint. The promoters mix and match numbers for R-values and reflectance and prett
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07/13/2011
Blogging Evangelism I have been recruited to talk to my fellow agents about the virtues of blogging. It's not like they haven't heard the term before, but they have managed to ignore casual efforts to get them started. This is a chance to talk about the process and the effectiveness of real estat
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07/08/2011
Residents of coastal California areas moist enough for redwoods are very familiar with this critter. UC Santa Cruz has adopted it as the school mascot. It's no match for the gators, lions, and tigers of other schools, but fierceness matters less than humor to UCSC students. I'm proud to present
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07/03/2011
Home buyers and sellers can take comfort in the latest residential sales statistics in Sonoma County. April and May were both lower volume than March and many feared a significant slow down in sales volume. The preliminary June numbers are in and they're the highest daily sales volume of the year
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07/01/2011
I am writing about country property in the one to five acre size for my sonoma.net site. I came across this picture of a Sebastopol country property a few years ago. I love the tone and character of the old barn wood and hope the new owners were able to salvage something from this project.
06/26/2011
I've got a leafy front yard with a mayten tree, blue spruce, and flowering hawthorn from left to right in this picture. The sky was leaden grey in the south fading to a lighter grey in the east. We don't usually get the great brooding skies of the midwest and east here, but the light reminded me
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06/19/2011
Every town has property where maintenance is delayed more than the Chamber of Commerce or neighbors would want. Detroit seems to have enough beautiful relics to make a book, Ruins of Detroit. In the wine country we don't have a lot of dramatic fixers, but we try to make up for it with nature's
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06/12/2011
Dry Creek Valley Open House I'm pleased to announce a group open house for Sunday June 12 in Dry Creek Valley. Three of Artisan Sotheby's International Realty vineyard estate properties will be open from 1 pm to 4 pm giving prospective buyers a chance to look at three unique properties, each with
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06/10/2011
If you're looking for a $400,000 house you should be shopping in the cities in which that price is close to the average. Sure, you're going to find outlier pricing in any city, but it makes sense to focus your search where you are likely to have many choices. The numbers tell another story as wel
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06/10/2011
Hydrangeas are one of my favorite flower-bearing shrubs. The leaves are beautiful, the buds, are pretty, and the flowers are showy and long-lasting. What I noticed in this photo is the veining and shape of the flowers mimics the leaves...which is what the flowers are...a specialized leaf.
06/05/2011
