Kicking off 2008 with a think

It’s already January 4th, and I have yet to write anything here at the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog. Almost every real estate blogger I know has written posts summarizing 2007 and prognosticating about 2008. Actually, to be fair, most of the prognostications have been of the form, “2008 will be up from 2007, unless it’s down or flat”. That’s the kind of crystal ball that the best in the business have - almost as transparent as the clear that Barry Bonds was using to pump himself up.

Instead of writing, I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking. Back in the early 1990’s, when I worked at IBM, I was taught to THINK. Before taking some action, if you instead take some time to THINK, you’ll achieve the desired result faster, with less effort. Lately IBM has been running some commercials about thinking, although to be honest, they don’t quite work for me.

Later in my corporate America career I worked at Intel, where I learned to Manage by Planning. If you plan for an outcome, and then manage to the outcome, you should get to the desired result on time.

IBM’s motto of THINK is more individualistic. Intel’s management approach to planning is more teamwork and results oriented. These days, I’m inclined toward both approaches. This last week, between managing a sale through its inspection period, supporting a new agent that’s joined my office, and dealing with the normal process of managing our inventory of rental properties, I’ve spent my spare time thinking about the direction I would like to take the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog.

For a refresher, I’m going to quote from the first post here, back on August 8, 2007:

I hope that over time, any of you that may be reading my blog will find some value, but initially, the biggest value I hope to gain is in better search engine placement.

I’ll freely admit that was a pathetic goal. Worse, the goal was to increase the search engine placement of my Web 1.0 site: www.teambelt.com. At times, that goal has mis-directed the content here.

So here’s my new goal for the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog:

To provide relevant real estate information for Phoenix, and the surrounding area, to buyers, sellers, and investors.

I’ll probably revise that goal again, as appropriate, but it’s good enough for now.

Today, as I begin to manage to that goal, I’ll stop letting this blog get distracted by seemingly random neighborhood and listing updates. Sure, for a select few, it’s nice to know about one property here and there, or one subdivision there and here, but for the majority readers, it doesn’t matter. It was somewhat good from a long tail perspective, but it distracts from the focus of this blog, so I’m going to move that kind of content to a redesigned TeamBelt.com. The new TeamBelt.com will have as it’s goal to give localized market updates for those neighborhoods that I choose to highlight. That’s a project I’ve worked on half-heartedly over the last month, that is nearing completion. Now I’m committed to staying focused, so this plan brings a greater priority to reworking TeamBelt.com.

And just so folks don’t get worried that this blog might become stale or boring, you’ll still find random musings about whatever may suit me, along with local business highlights. What you’ll find more of, however, is broader Phoenix area trends, including…drum roll please…real estate stats, like homes sold, current inventory, etc.

Late last month, I wrote that Elliott Pollack suggested 2008 would be a year that real estate agents would like to forget. Right now, I’m making preparations for 2008 to be the year I want to remember best. Our perceptions of the world around us today are formulated by how we planned for them to be yesterday. I’m planning for something special in 2008.

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