Watson Realty

St Augustine Horse Property on St Johns River

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:31:33 -0400

4.5 Acre St Augustine Horse Property with Dock on St Johns River
5 Bedrooms, 4 Baths, Barn with Three Stalls

This remarkable riverfront property offers a lifestyle for everyone. 4.5 acres with deeded riverfront and zoned agricultural! Stately oak trees, dock and boat house, barn with three stalls, hay barn, tack room, picnic pavilion and a wonderful 5 bedroom, four bath home situated to take advantage of nature's own gifts! First floor master and den!

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Glenn Weilbacher, Realtor Watson Realty Corp
888-236-2579

St Augustine Historical Home

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:07:50 -0400

St Augustine Historical Home for Sale
1893 Historic Victorian with seven bedrooms, five baths, 5,811 sq ft
$599,000

This incredible Queen Anne victorian is for sale at $599,000 reduced from over one million dollars. Unbelieveable interior details and immaculately refinished. In the heart of St Augustine's downtown historic district this home is a jewel. Beautiful gardens and backyard patio area. Zoned as a multi-family home.

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Next Generation RE Marketing Revisited

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:12:58 -0400

The Next Generation of Internet Real Estate Marketing

Earlier this year I posted about the Next Generation of Internet marketing. Now, six months later, the writing is definately on the wall. The first generation was all about offering access to the MLS listings and using an IDX system. The early adopters won with this as it was what home buyers wanted. Today, every real estate website is offering access and it no longer provides a competitive advantage. Social media is getting a lot of attention but it is a time consuming project that must be constantly updated.

The successful next generation concept I described in my previous posts is proving to be as productive as the first generation MLS access was. Homebuyers are spending months, and in some cases, a year or more researching their purchase. They are utilizing the MLS search feature and constantly monitoring home listings. But, they want more. They realize that they are not only buying a home but also buying into a neighborhood. They want information about the different subdivisions (the neighborhoods) and they want this information in a format that really tells and shows them about the neighborhoods. They need an answer to the question "What's the neighborhood like". They want to "see" the neighborhood and want information about the proximity to shopping, schools, medical facilities and commuter routes. Are there HOA's and what are the costs. This is the key to the Next Generation website.

Our next generation websites have now accumulated significant statistical data that provides a proof of concept. The sites are earning page one search positions for neighborhood home searches. Better yet, the websites are capturing visitors and experiencing return visits. Each month the neighborhood tour pages are attracting hundreds of visitors. The stats show that visitors are saving the website address in their favorite places and actually saving multiple pages. There are more page addresses saved than the total visitor count! The daily return visitor count is averaging between 30 and 50 people.

An unexpected bonus has been discovered in listing presentations. Sellers have become all the more aware of the Internet and want a listing agent who can put their listing on page one of Google. Most all listings agents will claim to upload a listing to syndicated real estate portals but, how many can claim to have page one positions under the name of the neighborhood a home is in. How many can claim to be able to put an actual listing on page one? With a page one position under the neighborhood name it becomes simple to place the listing on page one. In some cases we have two and three positions on page one of Google as well as Yahoo and Bing. The final proof of concept is in the leads generated as the sites are producing leads on almost a daily basis. On somedays there are multiple leads.

Want to see? Here are search engine position reports:

St Augustine Shores real estate Moultrie Creek houses for sale St Augustine Horse Properties

Here are neighborhood pages and the niche market page for horse properties

St Augustine Shores Homes Moultire Creek homes St Augustine Horse Properties

Heriatge Park Neighborhood Tour

St Augustine Horse Farm

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:16:25 -0400

St Augustine Mini Horse Farm
3/2 Mobile Home, 1.4 acres, two stall shed
$95,000

Quiet Country Living in this St Augustine horse farm, fencing for your horse(s), 2 stall shed, Live in MH while you build or give MH your Personal Touches to make it your Home. Handicap Ramp, Screened porch to enjoy your evenings. Water Softner, all appliances stay including Washer & Dryer. Dead end Street, only minutes to I-95 and 15 minutes to town. Motivated Seller, All reasonable offers considered

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Glenn Weilbacher, St Augustine Realtor
904-794-9609

Housing Industry in Deflation

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:43:52 -0400

The "D" Word for Housing Industry

Recently, as I listened to the experts talk about the possibility of "Deflation" I realised that the housing industry dropped into deflation in 2007 and has been experiencing the downward spiral typical of economic deflation. As both sellers and buyers have listened to the media they have each reacted and lowered their individual perception of home values. The result has been sellers dropping their prices and buyers making ever lower offers. A very large percentage of homes are now selling at values below depreciated replacement cost.

We need an authority to step in and put an end to the constant speculation on declining prices. These expectations of a continued decline are not based on a realistic valuation but, rather, on psychological conditions created by the media reports. In believing the media predictions for further declines in prices consumers are making it a reality. Someone has to say STOP! prices have already fallen below real values.

Tennis Balls Solve Problems!

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:53:03 -0400

Using Tennis Balls to Fix Things

I recently an e-mail from DeloresFoster of Old Republic Home Protection with one of those "Why didn't I think of that" suggestions for using tennis balls.

Do you have tennis balls just sitting around losing their bounce? Here are some creative ways to use them without ever setting foot on the court.

Cut an X in a tennis ball and slip it over the end of an old broom handle. Rub the ball over scuff marks on your wood or hard surface floors, and voila...they're gone...with no bending, stooping or scrubbing!

Got a light bulb that broke off in the socket? Carefully clear away any remaining shards of glass, then gently push a tennis ball against the light socket and twist to remove the bulb's embedded stem.
Cut an X in a tennis ball and slip it over the head of a hammer. Now you're less likely to ding up fragile or expensive wood.
Cut a tennis ball in half and use one of the sides to open those stubborn jars.
In the garage, hang a tennis ball on a string from the ceiling so that the ball touches the top left corner of your car's windshield. Now you have a marker and know exactly how far to pull the car in every time!

Absolutely great ideas!! Why didn't I think of that!

St Augustine Equestrian Properties

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:05:45 -0400

St Augustine Equestrian Properties and Horse Farms

Horse Farm $323,000
3/2, 2 acres, Stables

Green Acres in the country near St Augustine. Modern, Stylish Concrete block, Contractor/ Builder's own home. 1000+ of outside wrap around porches, insulated ready for easy enclosure. Casual, open Great Room with 17'vault, French Doors out to Covered Porch, Porcelain Tile throughout most rooms. Awesome Master with big closet, Jetted tub, dbl sinks. 2 Stall Horse Barn with Tack room, RV hookup, fenced paddocks/pasture.

Glenn Weilbacher, Realtor
Watson Realty Corp
St Augustine, Florida
888-236-2579

Make Your Website Sticky

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:59:02 -0400

30 to 50 Return Visitors Each Day

Without realizing what I was doing my St Augustine real estate website has turned out to be very sticky. Several months after launching the site my stats were showing that the "page view count" was four to five times the visitors count and the number of returning visitors was more than the unique visitors.

This was great! I was getting 30 to 50 people returning to my website every day. But why? In developing the site concept I wanted to include content that home buyers wanted to see. It took a month of discussions with other Realtors to determine what I had to do. Most home buyers want access to the MLS home listings and I already had that planned. I built a list of suggestions from my Realtor clients and found that the most popular answer was.... buyers wanted to know about the neighborhoods. They would find a listing they liked and they wanted to know about the neighborhood. I had included neighborhood information in earlier websites but those pages did not attract many page views. So, people did not want to read a lot of commentary about neighborhoods. I decided to try something different. Utiliziing my digital camera I started collecting photos of neighborhoods (subdivisions). I took photos looking down the streets and photos of homes throughout the neighborhood. I created the equivilant of a drive through. With these photos I created individual neighborhood tours with a short description of the neighborhood.

I have only recently noticed a one line statistic in my site stats. It shows the percentage of site visitors who save the site in their favorite places. Since the first month this percentage has averaged 90%. Incredible!! On some days it is over 100% meaning that some site visitors are saving multiple individual pages to their favorite places.

I sell St Augustine Florida real estate. Visit my website at http://st-augustine-homesearch.com

St Augustine New Condos at 40% discount

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:44:19 -0400

The Cottages at Winding Creek

New Condos Selling at 40% below original builders prices

$109,900 to $129,900

The original builder was foreclosed on and a new builder has taken over this complex. These condos were built in 2006 to 2007 but the interiors were not finished. A new builder has acquired the complex and is now completing the units. The first phase has already sold out and the next phase opens on June 16th. Prices are already increasing. The four floor plans vary from a 1,407 sq ft one level 2/2 at $109,900 to a two story two story 3 Bedroom, 21/2 Bath 1,680 sq ft unit at $129,900. All have a one car garage. The complex has a community swimming pool and is located just 4 miles from Crescent Beach, seven miles to downtown St Augustine, and 10 miles to St Augustine beach. It is within 5 miles of the major shopping and medical facilities on US1. There is a brand new Food Lion shopping center one block away and a Publix shopping center is two miles away.

Contact me for more details. Glenn Weilbacher, Realtor 888-236-2579 Local 904-794-9609 E-Mail

For More Information Click Here

Sticky Website-Creating Neighborhood Photo Tours

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:21:13 -0400

Creating a Neighborhood Photo Tour

In my previous post I described my success with neighborhood photo tours and our members raved about the concept. The neighborhood tours compelled site visitors to return to the site frequesntly to view the tours. The concept truely captured visitors with 90% of visitors saving the site in their favorite places.

The following has been developed over a period of time while I collected more than 1,400 neighborhood photos. Each step contributes to the efficiency of the process. From the settings on your camera to the methods for identifying the photos I have created a process that minimizes the time required.

It typically requires about 15 minutes to photograph a subdivision. At first I had a problem photographing more than one subdivision at a time because I couldn't separate the individual subdivisions. I then bought several more cards for my camera so I could put one subdivision on each card. The cards are not expensive.

1) On your camera there are multiple setting for resolution. You want a setting that will produce photo images that are 1200 pixels wide. This will produce photos that will fill the screen on most computers. It will also minimize the file size. Photograph a subdivision and then remove the card and label it with the subdivision name. Insert a new card.

2) When uploading the photos to your hard drive first create folders with the the name of the subdivisions. Then upload the photos into the appropriate folder.

3) If you are having your webmaster create the tour pages you can burn a CD with the subdivision folders and mail the CD to him. This makes it simple for your webmaster to load the photos onto his hard drive. If you are creating the pages yourself make a template page for the tours so that you don't have to remake this for each neighborhood.

4) The photos should be compressed utilizing jpeg compression to a file size around 150KB. Using your webpage editing software set the thumbnail size to 250 pixels wide and upload the photos in rows three photos wide.

Page One Position on Search Engines

The response from our website visitors is fantastic but even better has been the response from the search engines. We now have more than 50 page one positions under the names of the neighborhoods or subdivisions. In the process of creating the pages we utilized some simple SEO techniques to earn high search results. We put the name of the subdivision in the title meta tag as well as the description, The public page has a header with the subdivision name and we used the html header codes <h1> and <h2> to emphasize these phrases. In order to push the pages higher on the search results we created additional pages with commentary about the neighborhood and placed text hyperlinks on the primary neighborhood page.

Look at these pages to see examples of the keywording and the linked pages

St Augustine Shores Homes Moultrie Creek Homes Oakbrook Homes

This approach to SEO employs the long tail keyword concept. People are searching by subdivision name and these visitors represent high quality traffic.

If you have questions just e-mail me.

St Augustine Bridge of Lions Opens

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:10:54 -0400

The St Augustine Bridge of Lions

This is a computer produced image of the new bridge. The final road work and landscaping is being completed now. First opened in 1927 the original bridge cost one million dollars. The new 82 million dollar bridge is a replica of the original. This includes duplicating the original lights. Here is a photo of the original.

In order to facilitate the construction a temporary bridge was built alongside the old bridge. This bridge is now being dis-assembled and will be utilized on another project up north. It will be several months until everything is completed.

Florida Equestrian Properties For Sale

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:07:12 -0500

Florida Equestrian Properties

St Augustine Equestrian Property
3 Bedroom, 21/2 Bath, 2,980 Sq Ft Home with pool, 15 Acres $597,500

A horse lovers dream!!! This 15 acre horse farm offers a 10-stall horse barn, tack room, feed room, a 60' round pen for training, multiple fenced-in pastures, wash rack, hay barn, utility barn and so much more. The house has 3BR/3.5BA, sunken living room with fireplace, an office/den and a spacious kitchen with stainless steel appliances. Also included is a screened pool, a huge deck and a 3 car garage. This property is fully fenced and ready for your horses.

Other Equestrian Properties

29+Acres, 4 Bedroom home, complete professional equestrian facility $1,999,900 #111088

3 Acre Equestrian Property in River Oaks, 100 acres of trails, 4 bedroom home, $1,750,000. #101032

7.5 acre Equestrian Property with four stall stable, three bedroom home $495,000 #111822

19 Acre Horse farm with 12 Stall Stable, 4 bedroom home $685,000 #117892

3.9 Acre Equestrian Property in Whitelock Farms, stables, 4 bedroom home $848,000 #118436

For More Info Click Here

Government by the People, with Social Media its Becoming a Reality

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:45:25 -0400

The Internet and Social Media will Allow the People To Govern

The Internet is facilitating the ability of "We The People" to control our government. Via social media people from all across the country are able to make their wishes known. The Obama campaign made use of the Internet to capture votes and was an important contributor to President Obama's election. Now we are starting to use this media to bring about changes in our government.

Tea and coffee parties are the start. We can reach out as individuals and build groups. Groups will become crowds and crowds will become powerful forces to create change in Washington DC.

Do you know that if you serve one term in Congress you are paid your congressional salary for the rest of your life? Did you know that our Congressmen and Senators have the best health insurance plan available paid for by our taxes?

Obama ran on a platform of change. But, I don't think he thought it would be the change that is about to happen. It is time for us to use our votes to tell OUR government what we want.

South Carolina Antebellum Estate

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:56:33 -0500

Southern Antebellum Plantation 1850

Southern Antebellum Home
Four bedrooms, four full baths, 4,170 sq ft Five plus acres
Priced at $399,900

Living Room: 17 x 17 Dining Room: 17 x 17 Kitchen: 17 x 17 Family Room: 17 x 15 Master Bedroom: 17 x 16 Bedroom 2: 15 x 17 Bedroom 3: 14 x 14 Bedroom 4: 14 x 14 Laundry Room: 10 x 6 Library 18 X 16 Porch/Deck: 17x10

Southern Antebellum Home straight out of the history books, with the original charm and grace.

Careful remodeling has brought this southern antebellum home to today's standards. The main hallway with chandeliers welcomes you to the formal Dining Room and Living Room heart pine floors and large windows. There is crown molding throughout the house and both first and second floor ceilings are 10'7". Beyond is the updated kitchen and a wonderful wood paneled library. The living room has a fireplace that has been converted to gas. It has the original mantel with lintel trim and a marble fascia. An additional fireplace is in one of the 2nd floor bedrooms and there was another fireplace in the second bedroom on the 2nd floor. This can be redone. There are two master suites up & down. . At the rear is a patio and a garden. The home has been remodeled yet, there are some projects to be finished. There is an attached two car garage that has been converted into a workshop but could changed back into a garage. There is also a guest house that has barn wood flooring, a screened front porch, a living room, one bedroom, a eat-in kitchen and a full bath. This guest house is ready for restoration. Six acres total with fenced Bermuda grass pasture, three stall stable w/ tack room and two other storage buildings add to the list of facilities on the property. Located in the quaint, historic town of Ridge Spring (founded 250 years ago) outside of Aiken, South Carolina. Within walking distance of everything. George Washington's troops are believed to have camped on this property.

For Details Click Here

St Augustine Equestrian Center

Glenn Weilbacher (Watson Realty) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:59:31 -0500

St Augustine Equestrian Center

A great location just five minutes from the I95 Interstate and presently operated as a boarding facility, this equestrian center could be a training center or riding academy. The location, just minutes from the World Golf Village and it's related subdivisions is very accessible to a large area of the St Augustine, St Johns County and Jacksonville markets. It is an hour to the Ocala area and three hours to West Palm and Wellington. Built in 2001 to current codes, it is situated on 17.5 acres. The 7,000 sq ft barn has 18 12 X 12 stalls with ceiling fans and a larger birthing stall. The main aisle and cross aisles are wide with good air flow. There is an attractive office, rest rooms, a shower and laundry, a feed room, a facility tack room as well as individual air conditioned tack storage closets for each stall. There is a hay barn and an additional storage barn. A arena is lighted and there is a separate arena for hunters and jumpers. There are multiple paddocks and pastures as well as a circle pen. A inside wash down area and an outside area both have hot and cold water. This St Augustine Equestrian Center is a great opportunity.

Seller financing available to qualified a buyer. $999,000.

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