My wife and I started the New Year with a bang. At 6:30pm on January 1st Alex came out to join the rest of us.

I’ll try to get some blogging done, but I’ll be chilling out at home for most of the week just spending time with baby and Mommy trying to be helpful.

I hope your 2011 is looking as awesome (and as cute) as mine is.

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First of all, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to y’all! It’s been an extraordinary year for Megan and I. We’ve been back in Canada for just over a year, found/returned to our jobs, bought two cars, a house and I switched careers to become a Realtor. Now, just like Mary and Joseph, we’re waiting for the birth of our first child.

I hope you enjoy this holiday, and take the time to reflect on what’s important in your life. For me, that’s family, friends and God. I’ve got a string of parties, dinners and a lot of Church. We’re loving every minute of it, although we wouldn’t be that sad if we had to miss something to make a trip to the hospital.

This video (if you haven’t seen it yet) is brilliantly done. It’s a digital (social media) story of the Nativity. Enjoy, and have a Blessed Christmas!

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Most people think of me as the internet guy. I worked for a big digital marketing agency, I teach online marketing workshops, I’m a Facebook/Twitter/etc addict, and I have a pretty MacBookPro that I love. I’m starting my career as a REALTOR® by doing something a little bit old school.

I’m sending real, physical, handwritten, snail mail cards out to a couple hundred of my closest friends, family, acquaintances and business people. Just a personal note and a couple business cards. I think people like that are deserving of at least the 2 minutes it takes to write a card.

If you’d like a card, or just like the feeling of something addressed by hand amongst the bills and junkmail, leave your address and I’ll send you a note or a Christmas card.

Photo Credit: Libraryman on Flickr

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The last few months have been just about as crazy as they get. Periods of insanity, followed by complete boredom. There’s three exciting things happening before the New Year (beside the birth of my first child) and I wanted to remind y’all that there’s a mailing list separate from this blog where I’ll be sharing them first.

You can sign up for the email newsletter here.

REALTOR® News

As you might have seen, I’ve just finished all the courses and exams to become a REALTOR®, and I’ve been interviewing real estate brokerages. I’ll be making a decision very soon and getting started helping people sell their properties and find new homes or investments. The lucky people on the email list will get to hear about it first (exciting, I know…) and also hear a little bit about the process (the things I’m reluctant to post on my blog for all to see).

Internet Marketing Workshops

Back by popular demand (i.e. people lovingly nagging me) will be my one day Internet Marketing Workshops. The date is yet to be set, since I’m trying to dodge Christmas Parties, but it’l be in early December. This will also be a very intimate session, limited to no more than 8 participants and it’ll be the last time I offer the course for $247 before I completely re-write the curriculum and the price goes up. This course is great for real estate investors, Realtors and small business owners.

Affiliate Webinars

And after a bit of a delay, the REIN affiliate program is going to get things going with a big December sale. Here’s part of an email I recieved from REIN’s Member Support Manger

Last year we decided to do a year-end clearance sale of a number of popular REIN™ products, and since it was so well received, we’ve decided to repeat that promotion again this year. So, get ready for the REIN ™ December Blow-out Sale for 2010 – we will be discounting nearly our entire line-up of programs, kits and some e-based products as well!

This year we are also going to give our Affiliates a piece of the action… You can publish those links or banners on your website, or use the text in an email or newsletter that you send out to your group. These promotional pieces are being designed now, and will not be available in your Affiliate dashboard until Dec. 1, so you may want to think about the timing of your next communication to your group…can you publish something to your database on, or just after Dec 1, and will that fit with your overall communication schedule?

As you promote our Sale to your contact database, every one of your people who clicks on the link embedded in the Sale banner or text copy that you post and then gets transferred to our shopping page will qualify you for a commission if they purchase a Sale item. They don’t even need to purchase an item on that visit – our system will also track future visits and purchases from that same user, and will credit you with a commission for a purchase even days later.

To help people get up and runing on the affiliate program, I’ll be doing a free webinar to help teach you the basics. We’ll get that rolling sometime the last week of November, but it’s only available through my email newsletter so sign up now!

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It’s been nearly a month since I decided to become a Realtor, and Dad suggested that I blog a bit about the process and what I’ve learned about it thus far.

Hurry Up and Wait

After my time with Enquiro ended, I has some stuff to do, like finish the renovations on a house we’re now selling and do some consulting. Beyond that I had lots and lots of time and was prepared to devote myself to the Real Estate Associates Program (REAP) full time. I register for the short online Phase I course, and it takes a couple days for them to send me a login. You took my payment instantly, why does it take anything more than minutes to send me registration info?

At the conclusion of the Phase I course, which is a ‘pre-licensing’, learn about the industry, complete joke course, I’m supposed to write an exam according to everyone’s websites and the course material. I call AREA and the Testing Center, and finally discover that the test has been abolished. Good to know. Good to know that Realtor folks are up on the importance of the internet and having timely, accurate information on their websites.

Phase II – Real Realtor Info

Just to put everything into context, there are three phases in becoming a Realtor. The first one is a tiny online course which I really should have skipped. The next two are more substancial, and are broken into sections. Phase II has six phases and an online course, then an exam. Phase III covers the different area of practice, each with an exam, then an online course and finally the Provincial Qualifying Exam.

Here’s the flow chart of the progression:

As of today I’m on Phase II, Section III (and I’ve done the Environmental Issues online course)

Getting registered for Phase II was a gong show, and I’m seriously unimpressed with AREA. That’s a sentiment I gather is echoed throughout the industry. I’m still waiting on a refund they said would be coming through over 2 weeks ago, and an interesting conversation about a $150 administrative fee.

The content of Phase II isn’t bad. There will be more posts to come with tidbits of new/interesting things I have found in the content.

I’m working to approach this without thinking my experience has given me more than it has, and without any pre-conceived ideas, but really I’ve seen ~90% of this before. Oh, for the days when you could challenge the exam.

The Old Days

Speaking of challenging the exam, I had a good chat with Dad about when he did the exam. He was the last group who could challenge it, back in 1991 or so. Then the course was much shorter, didn’t include the extra modules and the Commercial/Residential/Rural areas at the end were optional instead of covering all three. It appears to be a much more comprehensive course now than it was before, and I have hope that when AREA is no longer the provider the courses will be even better.

Road Bumps?

So as I sit in the middle of Phase II, with little else to occupy my days (not actually, but I’d like to get through the course as fast as possible), I have one worry.

There’s at least four points to come where I have to register for a new phase, take an exam or wait for AREA/RECA to do something. If I have to wait for 3-5 business days between each step, this may take almost a month longer than I’d planned. And that, my friends, would suck.

In the mean time, I’m doing some freelance SEO/Social Media/Analytics consulting, renos, family and shopping for Brokerages. I’d like to get my designation sorted and start helping people out. If you’re planning to move or sell, and would like to chat once I’m licensed, give me a shout.

I’ll be easy to find. I’ll be the one behind a book in a Starbucks.

Photo Credit: Billselak on Flickr.

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Several people have asked if I have another internet marketing workshop coming up, and I’ve heard some others mention going to a site several times a week to check for updates. There’s three or four easy ways to get what I write about, or to just find out about my workshops and other interesting info.

Internet Marketing Workshops and Ranking Reports

I have an email list for my workshops and other related topics. It’s seldom more than 1-2 emails a month, so this is the easiest way to keep in the loop without hearing from me every few days. You can subscribe here or use the form below.

Blog Posts, Website Updates and More Fun

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you can get the posts sent to you so you don’t have to surf back here every day or two. There’s two ways to do that.

First, you can subscribe to my RSS feed, using a reader like Google Reader.

Second, you can also subscribe to email updates, which will sent you a nice pretty copy of my posts by email. Here’s a quick signup form for the email updates.

Twitter, LinkedIn and Social Media!

And if you want even more frequent updates, you can follow me on twitter here (@w_chris_davies).

Connect with me on LinkedIn here.

I’m an avid user of the Social Media stock market called Empire Avenue. My ticker symbol is WCD.

You can add me on Facebook if we’ve met in person, but be warned, my Facebook has essentially nothing to do with real estate, internet marketing or social media and I will not likely join your groups/like your page if it has anything to do with real estate.

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The last few weeks have been very busy both personally and professionally.

I’m no longer working at Enquiro. It was part of a long realization that search marketing, while interesting, isn’t what I want to do, nor do I think it’s what I’m meant to do with my life. Working remotely since I got back from Ireland at the start of the year had been becoming more and more difficult, and some of the changes at the company were making it even more difficult for me. I wasn’t doing my best work and wasn’t enjoying the work I was doing. Megan and I had already talked about it a bunch and decided on a plan of action before Enquiro and I decided to part ways.

So What Next?

I’m becoming a Realtor. Similar to February 2008, I feel like I’m accepting my destiny in returning to an industry I know very well, focusing on the areas I love (education, working with people) and exploring an industry professionally that I’ve been very involved in.

I’m going to focus my business on first time home buyers, although I expect I’ll also do a fair bit of business with investors as well. Several of my friends recently bought their first homes or first revenue properties and I truly enjoy helping them learn about buying properties, figuring out financing and ensuring they’ll be able to do the things they want with their lives.

Until Then

I’m working essentially full-time on my Realtor courses, but I am taking on a little more freelance SEO and Social Media consulting. I’m spending more time with family, working on renos and enjoying life.

Photo Credit

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I’ll be out of commission for the next week or so while we attend a friend’s wedding in Kelowna and enjoy a bit of vacation.

I have to admit that I feel bad because there’s 4 great blog posts almost done in my drafts folder, and I haven’t managed to finish them. They’ll be published next week, I’ll explain some of what’s been going on in my life and I’ll have exciting updates from next Friday’s REIN Field Trip and from the Sunday of the Multi Family Bootcamp!

Have a great week!

Photo Credit: PinkMoose on Flickr

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So this is actually really simple.

1. Buy a $200,000 house today.
2. Rent it out, making sure you’ve picked a house where the rent covers the expenses with a bit leftover.
3. Wait 20-30 years. That’ll make me 50-60.
4. You’ll have (at least) a $200,000 asset free and clear that you can sell, remortgage or light on fire.
5. Repeat Step 1 as able while you’re young.

Make sense? What do you have that’s better? What’s holding you back?

Photo Credit: stevendepolo

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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.

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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