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This may be more like Seven Reasons I’m Too Lazy To Blog, but we’ll work under the assumption I’ve just been busy. It might not look like it, but I’ve actually been busier than a one legged man playing Twister. There’s been a bunch of stuff happening in the background this week.

WP 3 I finally upgraded my poor blog to WordPress 3.0. Part of the reason is I like to let other people work out the bugs before I risk breaking my blog. I’m starting to be at the point where I get enough traffic and am lacking enough time such that if this thing goes down it’s a real pain in the butt. I’m happy to say that is was a painless experience.

How smart is your Theme?  How good is your support? Check out ThesisTheme for WordPress.Part of the reason I didn’t want to upgrade to WP 3.0 was I’d heard that there were some bugs between it and Thesis. I hasn’t upgraded from 1.6 to 1.7 yet, for the same lazy reasons as WP, and I really didn’t want to break my thesis installation. This was also pretty slick, although it still requires some FTP work. Anyways, I like it a lot, and even with the random GPL licensing legal conversation out there, Thesis is my preferred premium theme and is pretty fantastic for SEO.

1962 Stats I updated the ever popular Edmonton Real Estate Values Since 1962 spreadsheet with the must recent numbers. It goes up to June 2010 now, and I’ll give it till the fall and then recalculate the retrospective analysis. For now it’s all here if you want the data in a more accessible and useful format than the PDF’s you can get from the Edmonton Real Estate Board.

Housing Type Stats Since I was going through EREB stats anyways, I pulled the last few years worth of Edmonton’s average house prices by housing type into a spreadsheet and made a wee graph. Again, the data is here for you to enjoy and make use of.

Some have reminded me that I haven’t published the retirement savings post I mentioned in last week’s post about my generation being potentially screwed in retirement. I wanted to do more research into the actual numbers based on how old I am, when I want to retire, when my kids will go to University, etc. Stay tuned, it’ll come out this week.

It’s been a bit of a trend, but I’ve done more renos! Surprise! Actually, Leigh’s been the real rockstar of this project. Her role is much more that of a Project manager, since we’re using sub-trades for a lot of the work, but she’s still put a lot of sweat into this job.

And finally, I sent out two JV letters to friends who are interested in doing some real estate together. Unlike a lot of people in this industry, I don’t use this site to get people to invest with me. You can’t just throw me an email and then send me a cheque. I prefer to work with people I know reasonably well, have some shared interests and mutual friends. It keeps us both accountable and makes sure we’re both looking for the same things.

And actually, one more thing. I’m pretty stoked for the REIN fieldtrip and Multi Family weekend in August, although I’ll be at a wedding on the Saturday. Drop me a line if you’re going to be in town from somewhere far away, cause it’s always nice to meet new people. I get a kick when I bump into people who read my blog.

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This morning I got up and then went and demolished the old fireplace at the townhouse we’re renovating.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll remember the 64 ugly pictures of the place and then the 4-hour Kitchen Reno video.

Now I present for you a time lapse video of the removal of the old brick. We didn’t get the hearth out because it’s actually solid brick, so we’ll have to go Swiss cheese with the Hilti drill before we can bust it up.

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The Man Your Real Estate Could Smell Like

July 16, 2010
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If you haven’t seen the Old Spice ‘Man your Man could smell like’ commercial, you need to watch the next video. Then, prepare to laugh so hard you cry. Old Spice made over 100 videos over two days, responding in almost real time to actual people. Like this marriage proposal… Now go check out the [...]

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Your July 15th Event Roundup

July 15, 2010

There’s four great things going on over the next couple months, three of which are free! Tonight is the first of Brent’s Edmonton Investment Real Estate Discovery Tours. He’s doing free no-obligation tours of investment properties in Edmonton to help investors understand the different opportunities and landmines that go along with different types of properties. [...]

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450 of my Facebook Friends Are Going To Be Screwed In Retirement

July 14, 2010
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There’s been a lot in the news the last few months about how Canada’s gone from a nation of savers to a nation of spenders. While it’s true that we’ve gone from saving ~15% of our income to ~1%, there’s some scarier stats out there. We’re in serious danger of outliving our savings, getting useless [...]

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Edmonton Online Marketing Workshop July 18th

July 8, 2010
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The next full day Internet marketing workshop will be on Sunday, July 18th in Edmonton. We’ll be covering all the fundamentals of online marketing for Real Estate Investors and small business owners. Topics will include: The Online EcoSystem Search Engines Web Analytics Blogging and WordPress Social Media Email Marketing Lead Generation We’ll be starting at [...]

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4 Hours of Kitchen Renos in 24 Seconds

July 7, 2010

Here’s what I end up doing on nights when I’m not blogging or sleeping. I’ll be at the Edmonton REIN Workshop tomorrow night, so if we haven’t met before come say hi. Share and Enjoy:

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The Canada Day Song of The Week

July 1, 2010

Here’s another Canada Day classic from the Arrogant Worms (of The Toronto Song fame). I hope you enjoy your stat, and if you’re stuck working, you get lots of overtime. I’ll be at the festivities in Fort Saskatchewan and then out to a conference where I’ll be playing music all weekend. Share and Enjoy:

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