As I mentioned, we have been doing some condo previewing for a client.  We have a good selection of condos here…newer, older, with amenities, without amenities, some with main channel views, some with cove views, some with deeded boat slips, some with the chance to rent a boat slip…price range from about $120K for a studio to over a million for a penthouse in one of the newer communities.

We were in one built over the water and you could go out on the balcony and see and listen to the water lap underneath (cool! serene!).

Like houses, they are all different…it’s one of the things we like about this place!

The foreclosure sales for Bridgewater Pointe and Bridgewater Grande were postponed when the developer declared bankruptcy…this was not announced until right before the sale and looking at the pictures, I would not be surprised if there was a record set for the largest number of spectators for a sale on the Franklin County Courthouse steps!

In related news, the Southlake Commons commercial property on Route 40 across from The Whistlestop was auctioned off…purchased by Ron WIllard, Sr. for $700,000.  Hopefully this will result in a major grocery store for that part of the lake.

Wonderful news this morning that AEP has placed the 5000 acres around the dam into a conservation easement with the state…preserving the wonderful vista of Smith Mountain…I still find it breathtaking after many many years of seeing it…

Fittingly, we were previewing condos today and were down at Vista Pointe…one of the best places to see the mountain by land.

(BTW…sorry for the blog silence…we have been dealing with a revolting illness here…thankfully recovering nicely).

The foreclosure auction for the Bridgewater Pointe condo project is scheduled for Tuesday, April 16th, although the developers claim to be in “negotiations” with BB&T to keep going.

Several posts ago I was talking about architecture “fitting” with its surroundings and in my opinion, these condos did not “fit” here in terms of architecture but also in lifestyle…people who buy high priced luxury condos are not usually the ones that like the laid back lifestyle here at Smith Mountain Lake…in fact, many people coming here are coming to get AWAY from that lifestyle…so it is no surprise to me that none of the units sold.  I could go on a rant about how nobody here seems to look at any demographics when they decide to open a business here or build a project here (there are a few exceptions of course).

Since the building is already there, though, I would like to see someone buy it and at least maintain it…the thought of  a crumbling, unkempt vacant structure there is not a good one…

When we moved here, we “rearranged” the house from how it had been used before to put the dining area in the room with the most windows…the most windows overlooking the lake and most of our gardens.  Yesterday at lunch we were treated by an amusing display by four loons…one had caught a very large (relative to the bird anyway) shad and had it in its mouth and seemed to be trying to figure out how to eat it while the other three loons tried to get it from him.

The loons are fairly common here in winter and we see more of them during migration and rarely in summer.  We occasionally hear their wonderful trill…

We realized we hadn’t seen the slate juncos for a few days…safe journey north.  The hummingbirds will probably be here by the end of the month!

Thank you for your patience this last week of no postings…a much needed computer upgrade was taking place…I had a serious computer meltdown in January (blown power supply that took some other important parts with it…like the hard drive…) and had been limping along with the basic laptop we drag to the office for the occasional time when we have to access the MLS while we are there (most of the time we have done extensive work at our home office before we go to the office office…).

One too many restarts caused by the need to clear memory to do important functions forced me into to making the decision…XP or Vista…I decided Vista was not going away and got a sweet deal at BestBuy.com…and spent last week acquiring, setting up, transfering data from several sources and unpacking and getting comfortable using the new system… I like it…it’s fast, it doesn’t crash or need restart, it’s got a lot of good security features…even good games!  And I can upload pictures to it (an amazing hassle on a laptop with only 2 USB ports - one for the mouse and one for the printer) so this blog ought to become more interesting (stop cheering!).

When I first got in to the business, computerized MLSs were just starting…the first system I dealt with was essentially a teletype machine that you placed the telephone receiver into suction cups…printed out on thermal paper (don’t expose to too much sun…it would fade to unreadable in hours)…no fax machines (datagrams!)…no Internet…we’ve come a long way, baby!  Good for agents but especially good for the consumer!  More on that later this week.

I participate (mostly lurking) on several listserves with other real estate agents - some local, some national.  One of the largest has had a running conversation for the last few weeks about using Craigslist for advertising properties.  The talk has run from “It’s a wonderful resource that makes the phone ring.” to “It’s a horrible place that takes porno and you would be cheapening your seller’s properties by advertising there.”   PUL-EEZE!

Where to advertise is a choice.  If Craigslist bothers the seller, don’t advertise there.  If the seller thinks Craigslist is a good idea (most do if it makes the phone ring, they like it even better if it sells their property :>)), then by all means put it up there… Last time I checked, people looking for houses were not looking for porno and vice versa…and Craigslist has a strict policy against porno…remove it immediately when notified…and words like the above are how rumors get started…

The overall tone of the conversation on the listserve about Craigslist has died down now but the inpur from agents that use it are that it is fantastic for rental property and depending on how you use it, worthwhile for sale property. We use it for some of our listings…haven’t used it long enough to have all the tweeks necessary to use it to its fullest but we’ll work on it!

Now I could start on the press and the real estate market and their take on Chicken Little…but I’ll turn the rant mode off for the day!

I don’t have anything about medical services on the web site…although we are often asked about them…perhaps the forthcoming FAQs…

However, there are doctors and dentists here at the lake (with an increasing number of specialists) and hospitals (community hospitals in the county seats of Rocky Mount and Bedford and large hospitals in Roanoke and Lynchburg) and urgent care and two coming medical helicopter pads for fast flights out of here if the ambulance isn’t fast enough…an assisted living facility will open this summer.

But…the quality of care and healing is not something that you can really read in a black and white report…so we talk to people that have had dealings with these people and places and it’s all positive.  We visited a friend in stroke rehab this weekend in Roanoke and his wife was telling us how pleased they were with the care…and the people taking care of him….a much different experience than some of the stories we have heard from other parts of the country… and so good to hear if someone should ever have the need.

We like to maximize buyers’ time when they are here at the lake and so we try to look at most of what is available in their price range before they get here… it’s called previewing.

A house came up on “The Hot Sheet” last week…newly listed and right in the price range of someone we are working with…so we went to go see it.

In the price range, you should expect nice stuff…oh, but the listing failed to mention that it had a fine view of a busy marina…that the house was being lived in but that strange things weren’t finished yet or were finished wrong (just what were those extra holes in the ceiling of the family room?), that a whole bunch of er, eh…problems…were marked with blue tape (are they going to be fixed…is the owner going to be arguing with the builder about them…just what are they?)…about the dogs in the cages in the basement that you failed to warn us about…I could go on and on…but I won’t because we saw enough to know that the buyer we are working with has already seen much nicer stuff than this for the same or less dollars…

This is one of the reasons that we very much prefer to schedule appointments with buyers…

One of the benefits of having us both be in real estate is that we bounce ideas off each other…we spent a lot of time on Friday discussing at what price this house was going to have to be to encourage offers…let’s just leave it at…a lot less!

It’s almost 60 degrees here today and the lake is dotted with bass boats wandering around, ducking in coves, looking and learning.  Saturday is one of the first fishing tournaments of the year - a college fishing tournament involving teams from a lot of our Virginia colleges and universities.  It’s supposed to be chilly and rainy on Saturday so they are wise to do their homework today!