Los Angeles Real Estate

This kidnapping case ended when a Mexican investigator dialed the cell phone of a Los Angeles woman. “We have your mom,” he said as her mother cried. The call came a year ago Friday, or 12 days after two San Diego County women were abducted in Rosarito Beach. A kidnapping cell had targeted one of the women because they thought she was a wealthy real estate agent.

Source:Mexican investigators honored for work on kidnappings (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Matt Martin Real Estate Management Saves $141,000 per Family in Short Sales (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)

Jan 31, 2009 at 9:00 am.

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Matt Martin Real Estate Management negotiated average write-downs of $141,000 for homeowners who came to the firm for help with short sales and foreclosure prevention in 2008. As the nation’s largest facilitator of short sales, Matt Martin Real Estate Management has completed more than 10,000 short sales.

Source:Matt Martin Real Estate Management Saves $141,000 per Family in Short Sales (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)

Google QuickSand: US bias and other fun findings while drowning in sand

Jan 30, 2009 at 2:02 pm.

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It admittedly has been a while since I have tried to rank a brand new domain from scratch so fortunately the "Google Sandbox" concept hasn’t crossed my mind in a long time. Hell it’s even got its own Wikipedia entry these days. Well I can report that the sandbox effects are alive and well but there are some things that are new to me that I wanted to report on to get your thoughts on your experience. What I have noticed: There doesn’t seem to be the same filter or sandbox effects in non US Google engines. For example Google.de or Google.es rank my new domain on page one in their results but no where to be found in the top 500 on Google.com The filter can be on a page by page level and not at a domain level. I have sub pages within the site that ARE ranking to the top for terms in Google but these same DO have quality direct inbound links into them. So it seems that on a page by page level you can climb out of the sand while that doesn’t mean it will lift your entire site from the filter. The sandbox is exposed on "future" datacenter checks. Again could be late to the party here but performing a search on "future" datacenters on tools like DCcheck.com will show your sandboxed page ranking "where it should rank" without the filter. Which is encouraging and frustrating at the same time! So the big question is how does a site climb completely out of the sandbox? Here is a short list:

Build quality links. The obvious one, the more quality links you build the better shot you have at going out. The caveat being, you may need to build these quality links to a number of pages including your homepage to free it.
Time. After you build the links you may just need time for them "to bake".
Move out of the US. Got to consider this right? Less competition in the SERPS, no Sandbox.

What are you seeing and what tips would you add for folks looking to dig out?

Five Star Institute Hosts West Coast Conference for REO Agent and Broker Education (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

Jan 30, 2009 at 9:00 am.

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The Five Star Institute, an education provider that offers professional guidance and a specialization in working with defaulted real estate, will host its first West Coast Educational Conference in Garden Grove, California, from March 18-21.

Source:Five Star Institute Hosts West Coast Conference for REO Agent and Broker Education (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

Bargain hunters push sales of existing homes higher (Montgomery Advertiser)

Jan 30, 2009 at 9:00 am.

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WASHINGTON — Sales of existing homes posted an unexpected increase last month, as consumers snapped up bargain-basement foreclosures in California and Florida, closing out the worst year for the U.S. real estate market in more than a decade.

Source:Bargain hunters push sales of existing homes higher (Montgomery Advertiser)