I keep a cooler for transporting candles and soaps in the Summertime. While performing a Setting the Stage service today, I found this little Gecko had stowed away. Posted from WordPress for Android

The Stage Coach just configured WordPress for Android and is posting a sample blog from his phone… wonder if I can add photos this way… hmmm… Posted from WordPress for Android

Coming Soon 4 Bedroom Home in Granada Oaks – Austin – 78737 The Stage Coach provided a Basic Stage Coaching with Home Staging Evaluation Report Card Service… …where we come out to the home and go room to room with the owners and/or REALTOR discussing each room and what attention is required. Pictures are usually [...]

One of the REALTORs that I keep up with on Facebook posted a link to a Yahoo Real Estate News Article this morning that caught my eye.  It was called: “Renovating Doesn’t Pay Off Like It Used To” by Les Christie.  If you’re interested in reading the original article, it’s available at REALTOR.org: “2009 Cost vs. Value Report” by By G.M. Filisko.

A rush of thoughts has come to mind reading both of these articles.  First and foremost, Isn’t “All Real Estate LOCAL?” It’s kind of cliche, but what’s working here in Austin is not necessarily going to apply in San Francisco or Las Vegas. That makes my recommendation to only take this article at its face value because it is based on National Averages. 

The Yahoo Real Estate article mentions that High-end Kitchen remodels are not paying off… well, it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that spending apx $112,000 (Yahoo’s Avg for 2009) was not a good selling strategy.  You’d have to be in a very specific market for a long period of time for a six figure renovation to pay for itself.  There are some areas of Austin where people have owned homes for a while that this could apply to… if you were the original owner who purchased the home in the 1970′s…

Instead of picking apart both of these articles on the minutia, let me just make one recommendation:  Discuss the need for renovations with your REALTOR.  When they are working up the comps for the pricing of your home, they should also be making notes of features of the homes that are selling.  And they should be informing you what the builders in the neighborhood are doing.

My favorite example:  granite counter tops.
It’s not uncommon to hear an agent recommend granite counter tops as an upgrade in preparation for selling your home. After all, they always add granite on HGTV. [Wretch!] Granite is NOT Always the answer!  But if your REALTOR is able to show you that 3 out of 4 of the homes in your area that sold in the last 60-90 days had granite counter tops, it’s time to consider it.  Then, if they show you that granite is a upgrade featured in new home construction in your immediate area and is already installed in their available spec homes, then you are going to have to seriously consider doing the work.  But if neither of these hold true, do not put the money into your counter tops if it could be used more appropriately elsewhere!

As your Home Stager, I can help you complete the renovations and repairs, but I lack the access REALTORs have to the local market sales and statistics. That’s why I like to consider each home a partnership opportunity.  The REALTOR can do what they do best: Price, Market and Sell the home.  While The Stage Coach will stick to what we do best: getting your home in Sell-Ready condition.

As a quick follow up to my blog from a couple of days ago, I was hoping there would be a better way to point RSS Graffiti towards a specific image file.  As you may notice from my signature below, my blogs contain many image files.  To me, it just makes good sense to select an image that goes along with the blog – right? Duh!  And the image that showed up with the Wall posting on the left, is not what I would have selected.

But, RSS Graffiti does not allow you the same flexibility that posting a Link to your Facebook wall does. In fact, if I post a link to a page on my website, I have to scroll through 17 or 18 different images to find the right one.  And this defeats the whole “Automation” aspect that I was looking for in the first place.

So, I thought about it: If I were a computer, how would I select an image?  (I had read on RSS Graffiti’s support site that they use an algorithm to exclude small pics and banner ads) Well – I would probably just grab the first one and use it.  But how do I make sure the one I want is first?

Well – I had a guess.  And I think it worked! it didn’t work!

All I did was, save the jpg file of the book cover as 01-How-to-clean-and-care-for-practically-anything and the picture to the left was what appeared on my Wall.

As a secondary test, I renamed the RSS Graffiti’s logo to begin with 01- and I am hoping that it will thus be along side the RSS feed posting as the selected image!

If so, if you have a logo you want assoicated with all of your blogs, all you have to do is rename the logo used on your blog page!  That would be too easy, right?  Well – let me know if you try it so we can find out if it works regularly, or is just a coincidence!

UPDATE: Here’s what showed up after this post:  It picked the ‘First try’ picture above, with my FB signature on it. Not at all what I had hoped – second try was a fluke, I guess.

I opened a support ticket with this question, and if the developer gets back to me, I’ll post what I learn.

I’ve been playing with several RSS Feeders to attempt to get The Stage Coach’s Diggin’s & Plunder Blog and Active Rain blog to automatically feed to Facebook.  But until this week, none of them accomplished it the way I had hoped.  On a fluke, I searched the applications for RSS one more time, and discovered RSS Graffiti.

For me, the selling point is, I can send RSS feed to my Personal Page and/or The Stage Coach’s Fan Page on Facebook, and it shows up on the Wall and in my Fans’/Friends’ Feeds!  Bingo!  Other applications created Tabs or Boxes, and did not provide the exposure I was looking for… And Manually feeding them out was a big time waster every time I put some thing up.  RSS graffiti is an easy set up, and comes with a multitude of options.

This week, I will be re-planning my current Blog-posting schematic to make sure that nothing is being repeated.  Plus, at this point, I am only feeding to The Stage Coach’s Fan page, and not my personal page, until I can figure out a way to keep them from being published at the same time.  [Feature Request! Optional feed posting Delay!]

If you give it a try, come back and let me know what you think!  Or if you’re using an application that works for you, please tell me about it!