My new office: Heading west, but stopping short

I am moving to Louisville, KY, on Nov. 18. My wife accepted a new job and we bought a house out there, so I figured it’d make sense for me to move to Louisville as well.

This move, however, won’t impact my ability to help my clients. I am confident that I’ll still be able to help you from my new home office in Louisville. I also will be returning to Washington, DC often.

I’ve been a huge fan of Louisville since I first visited it four years ago. My wife and I, while sure to miss DC, are thrilled to be relocating there.

(And, of course, we used Brandon Green Companies to help us find a real estate agent in Louisville.)

Brandon Green Companies launches new real estate website with blog

Brandon Green Companies a top-tier real estate firm in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, just relaunched its website. I helped write and edit the text, create the site’s architecture, and decide on the design.

While the whole site was rethought, the most significant additions are the capabilities to search all market listings and get a free comparable market analysis of a home’s value, and the blog.

I’m especially excited about the latter—Brandon and his team have an interesting and informed perspective on the real estate market in Washington, DC; Northern Virginia, and Maryland; now it’s available to everyone.

(And Brandon Green Companies isn’t just a client of mine; I’m a client of his. Brandon helped me sell my condo a few years ago. If you’re looking to buy, sell, or invest in real estate, you can’t do better than Brandon and his team.)

Me: In podcast form

Yvonne Perry of Write On! Creative Writing Services interviewed me last month for her weekly Writer’s in the Sky Podcast. Well, she just released the podcast this week: TGI Friday December 22, 2006–Zach Everson. Consider it a Christmas present for the Internet.

In Part One of our interview we discuss how Zach started his writing and editing career from the proceeds of a real estate investment.

Click here to listen to Part One…

In part two we discuss why he decided to become a Toastmaster and how his public speaking experience has been helpful to him as a writer.

Click here to listen to Part Two…

While it’s awkward to listen to myself, I’m happy with the result; hopefully you’ll enjoy listening to it. And feel free to share your thoughts about the podcast.

Freakonomics on the benefits of being specific

I just finished Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. On pages 73-75 they analyze the correlation of words in real-estate ads with the selling price of a house:

Listed below are ten terms commonly used in real-estate ads. Five of them have a strong positive correlation to the ultimate sales price and five have a strong negative correlation. Guess which are which:

• Fantastic
• Granite
• Spacious
• State-of-the-art
• !
• Corian
• Charming
• Maple
• Great Neighborhood
• Gourmet

Can you discern which five terms correlated to a higher sales price and which five correlated to a lower one?

The answer: granite, state-of-the-art, Corona, maple, and gourmet fetch higher sales prices, whereas fantastic, spacious, !, charming, and great neighborhood correlate to the lower ones.

What do those terms have in common? The ones that lead to higher prices are specific–there is no doubt about what most of those phrases mean. As for the lower-priced ones, well “!” is subject to a lot of interpretation.

Whether it’s in a real-estate ad, a resume, or a proposal, specificity pays.