David Sobotta's Blog

I have spent a lot of time writing and talking about North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks.  I love to write and take pictures so I have an extensive amount of information about the area online. My start in blogging came back in the fall of 2004 well before we moved to the area.  I made it a prio...

Whether you are a buyer, seller, or a real estate agent, there is a benefit to not getting lost in the crowd. Recent news that Apple would be skipping CES once again brought this point back home to me.  This is not a change in strategy for Steve Jobs and company.  As someone who worked at Apple f...

When we decided to sell our family home after living in it part time for the last four years, we chose one of the top producing Realtors® in the Roanoke Valley to help us sell our home.  While we have lived in the area for over twenty years, I knew without question that we needed a local professi...

While my four years in real estate does not qualify me as an old timer, I have been through enough reinventions to smell change.  My favorite quotation comes from the motivational speaker, Dennis Waitley.  It goes something like this. "Crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind." To me that...

The Internet has a tremendous amount of information.  It does not take long to figure out that some of it is helpful and some of it is worthless. I have always found this to be a basic law of the Internet. It is something that people looking for homes, selling homes, and those helping them should...

I recently presented a class on social networking to some members of our local MLS in Carteret County, NC. As is my tradition in making presentations, I did not rely upon my own thoughts and conclusions.  I gathered information from contacts on ActiveRain and from those on LinkIn. I had well over...

I am doing an educational presentationon social networking this week to Realtors® from the Carteret County MLS. Obviously I believe strongly in the value of social networking.  It actually is the core of my business strategy.  I will be sharing some of my personal experiences including  the story...

This morning while I was at my home office desk, I got a phone call from two ladies who were headed south on Interstate 95.  One was the wife of someone who worked closely with me at Apple Computer. He and I remain very good friends.  The other was her sister, and they were exploring places for t...

It helps to think back to your own experiences when trying to help others find that right spot to live. We have been through a number of significant moves in our lives. The ones that I remember the most were when we went from Halifax, NS to Columbia, Maryland and from Columbia to Roanoke, Va. Our...

There is no question that technology provides us with some fantastic tools that few people could have predicted twenty years ago. As real estate agents, we are right in the middle of a revolution.  Buyers and sellers also have options that allow them to come to a property search or listing meetin...