April 5, 2007, Vol 1, Issue 11

April showers bring May flowers. So what do Mayflowers bring? A groaner – we know. Sorry. Now that we’ve got that out of the way…

What are the three most important things in real estate? Location, location, location. This edition of Redux focuses on geography. Zip codes, mapping, locations…(oh my!)

We know you’re busy. So we’ll stay on task (not easy for us with Spring Fever and all…) and bring you some great research sites. You can thank us later.

Zippy.

Have you ever wondered what zip codes (or towns) are within a certain radius of a specific location? We can think of loads of times we’ve wanted to know just this. It’s great for helping narrow in on your target audience!

Here is the easiest tool we’ve found from Zipmath. Simply enter a zip code and the radius and VOILA.

Other neato tools here – just pull down the applications menu. And if you’re looking to add geo- information to your website, they’re happy to sell you some software!
Intermission.

Let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby….

If you’re like us, you are a tad fed up with computerized phone systems pretending to be customer service applications. We want to talk to people! (And that’s not just because we spend so much time in front of our computers…)

Go to get human 500 database where you’ll find instructions on how to shortcut to a real, live person on tons and tons of company phone systems.

Less time on hold, more time to play…Did we say play? We meant work!

Show me.

No, We’re not talking about Missouri. But hi to all our Missouri readers! We’re talking about mapping. You can call us, we provide mapping and geographic research services. (Sorry for the mini-plug, we couldn’t help ourselves.) Or you might want to take a look-see for yourself. You can see where a zip code or a town or a county is. How it sits. What’s nearby.

Go to Maps.Huge.Info. You’ll find simple, online tools:

* Zip Code Boundary Maps
* Town/City Boundary Maps
* County Boundary Maps
* Core Based Statistical Area Boundary Maps
* Geocoder: Translate an address into latitude and longitude coordinates

And if you still need more? Call us!

Stump the Researcher.

A reader asks: I hear a lot about how many blogs there are – one stat said there is a new blog created every ½ second or some such number. (That’s faster than a sucker born every minute!) But how many blogs are ACTIVE and how many get started and stall out? Also, while you’re at it, is there any way of ranking a blog’s “goodness”. Like some sort of ranking? And if so, what is that ranking based on? Man, I’m FULL of questions!

You ARE full of questions! Or something… (hee hee)

And submit your own question – send an email!
Click here for the answer. It’ll just take a minute.

That’s it for now. We’ve given you some great tools so you’ll never get lost again or send mail to the wrong city!

And if you’re going on Spring Break, just remember that almost everyone with a phone also has a camera! So behave! We don’t want to see you on an episode of “Clients Gone Wild.”

Until we meet again (in two weeks),